Espedair Street

THIRTEEN

'Good morning. Mr Daniel Weir?'

I looked at the two young, clean-shaven men on the grey screen. Coats, suits, ties. I said, 'Yes.'

The one who was speaking held a card in a little plastic wallet up to the camera. 'I'm Detective Constable Jordan, this is Detective Constable McInnes. Could we have a word with you, Mr Weir?'

I think I was silent for a moment or two. Then I said, 'Of course,' and let them in. I thought it must be something to do with the club called Monty's, and that broken aquarium. What had happened? Another death? Another chance catastrophe? Had one of the bouncers turned out to have a thin skull, or suddenly collapsed with a fatal blood clot in the brain? Had the cracked glass given way without warning and crushed or sliced in half some glazier or plumber? Nothing seemed too bizarre or outrageous.

I'd spent the first part of the night curled up on the floor of the bedroom, foetally tight, occasionally shivering, then climbed up to the tower's highest room, which is quite bare, just a couple of seats, and sat there, looking out over the city for a while. Then, still unable to sleep, still thinking about Christine, about Davey and about my own Jonah of a life, I went down to the crypt and tried to distract myself with music, composition, messing about with old tunes and new tunes, until I gave that up too and went for a cold, quiet walk through the mostly sleeping city, aimlessly wandering, growing cold and tired and coming back, and still not able to cry, and deciding that there really was very little left for me, that I had been responsible for both of their deaths and, if there was a God, then it was either a sadistic bastard, or didn't give a damn. And, if there wasn't, then the patterns and currents of cause and effect we dignify with the name 'fate' sure as shit seemed to be trying to tell me something.

I came back to the folly at last, decided that I just didn't want to live any more. I climbed to the top of my high, blasphemous tower and looked down at the street, but knew I couldn't do it that way.

What else? The only deadly drug I had was booze, and I suppose I could have tried drinking a couple of bottles of vodka, but my stomach has always protected me from the worst effects of alcoholic poisoning, acting as a safety valve and simply chucking back out the offending liquid before it has time to inflict maximum damage, so I didn't think that would work.

I lay, unsleeping and dry-eyed on my bed, and put on the radio, hoping to hear a human voice.

White noise; static.

It filled the darkened room, filled me, and I thought it might send me to sleep, but it didn't. The bright, meaningless sound washed and broke over me, and I let it, surrendering to its enfolding, random signal, closing my eyes.

And I knew then how I'd kill myself.

I switched the radio off again, as the chilly, watery dawn slowly heaved itself out of the cloudy eastern skies.

I had breakfast with Rick Tumber at the Albany, before he caught the shuttle back to London. We talked. I said I'd think about making a come-back. He seemed relieved, apparently believing I hadn't taken the news of Christine's death too hard. But then he didn't know how much of it had been my idea.

He checked out, paid his bill, and set off for the airport in the GTS. I walked back through a sudden, thin sunlit shower of sleet to St Jute's. The policemen came half an hour later.

Tommy was in custody; they'd gone to his parents' address to question him about the theft of a quantity of whipped-cream containers; he'd assaulted a police officer and resisted arrest.

Detective Constable Jordan took my statement. I said I hadn't known the cans were stolen, but that I had let Tommy snort the gas; how this fitted in with Tommy's own story, I had no idea. DC Jordan cautioned me and told me that charges might be brought against me at some point in the future. They'd be in touch.

I think they might have searched an ordinary house for drugs, but St Jute's must have looked a little daunting.

'Is this place used as a warehouse, Mr Weir?' Jordan asked, eyeing the chaos of crates and boxes and assorted plant and vehicles.

'Not really,' I said. 'This is my home.' The policemen looked at me sceptically. 'I used to be in the music business,' I explained. 'The record company sold a lot of records in the Communist Bloc, but they don't like to part with hard currency over there; we came to an agreement we'd take goods in lieu of royalties. This stuff is what we couldn't sell.' The two detectives exchanged glances. 'My lawyers have the appropriate bills of lading and import documentation; Macrae, Fietch and Warren. Contact them if you want to check.'

They took a desultory look round the place, perhaps wishing that the assembled merchandise really had been stolen, but they left with only the shopping trolley full of whipped-cream cans.

I watched them go, put my coat on again, turned off the space heater, the gas and the electricity, stood in the centre of the choir for a while, looking round (I listened for the pigeon, but couldn't hear anything), then I left by the Elmbank Street door, certain I would never see the place again.

Because I'd killed Christine, too. Me and my clever, stupid, blasphemous, believer-baiting ideas.

It went way back, the way these things usually did, rooted ineradicably deep in the past, tangled in with all the times you thought you'd done the right thing, made the correct decision. So you thought anyway, but always, in there, hidden away, was the thing that made you pay, the one wayward idea, the garbled but effective message, like a cancer, single-cell but growing, spreading, filling; killing.

After the first US tour, when I'd made my ill-advised remarks, and we'd had a little trouble with the fundamentalists, I'd been stunned that people like that still existed today — my sheltered upbringing, I suppose — and then angry that such idiocy could have that effect and be given the credence it was in schools and textbooks and people's lives. That anger surfaced once when I was with Christine, producing a bad germ of an idea.

Lying together in bed, in the Year of our Lord 1978, I believe, in one of the cavernously cold rooms of Morasbeg. I'd bought the place the year before, in a misguided fit of acquisitive enthusiasm, taken with the idea of being a Highland landowner (1 hadn't bought the island yet; that came later).

We'd been talking about the fortnight's touring holiday we'd just taken, on Mull and Skye and the Hebrides. Christine had driven. We hadn't been able to come back from Lewis on the day we wanted because it was a Sunday, and so we'd been stuck in Stornaway for a day, twiddling our thumbs and watching all the good folk going to the kirk. Remembering that had got me onto religion generally, and the Christian fundamentalists I'd offended in the States in particular .

'You know what we should do?' I said, sitting up and taking the binoculars from the bedside table.

'What?' Christine rolled over in bed, propping her head up with one honey-coloured arm (it had been a sunny second week on the Isles.

The bed in the main bedroom was situated within a huge, magnificent but heat-leaking bay window on the second floor, looking out across acres and acres of hummocky heather and marshy grass, with a glimpse of the sparkling sea to one side. I fiddled with the focus on the binoculars, searching for deer.

'We should make those Neanderthals really sick; I mean, they keep accusing us of trying to corrupt youth and all that shit, and taking the name of Christ in vain; well, we ought to think up something deliberately, that would upset them.'

Christine was silent for a moment or two. 'How about calling the next album "Puck God"?' she suggested.

'Too subtle,' I said. 'Needs to be more obvious. We're dealing with genuine rednecks here.'

'Uh-huh,' Christine said. I scanned the wind-blown waste of Ardnamurchan while Christine stroked my hairy back.

'Re-enact the crucifixion,' I said thoughtfully, my eyes screwing up as I pointed the binoculars towards the glittering sliver of sea to the south-west. 'But use a black man!'

'Too tasteful. Besides, they might like seeing a black guy getting nailed to a cross.'

'Hmm. You're right.' I looked into the burning golden glare of the distant sea, fuming light over silhouetted dunes and waving grass. For a second I thought a shadow against the brassy reflections off the sea looked like a deer, but as I juggled with the focus it disappeared.

I remembered the previous week, when we'd been together and alone on a beach on Iona, looking west to the sunset; the Atlantic rollers came crashing in long lines of surf and spray, and for a few moments the two of us, watching the head of what we thought must be a seal, suddenly saw its whole sleek-fat, suspended body within the green cliff face of the next up-rearing wave; outlined, upright, as though standing inside the wave, silhouetted by the sunlight falling from behind.

'Got it,' I said, putting the binoculars down.

'What?'

'Your name.'

'Christine? Brice? All of it?'

'Part of it; part of Christine.'

Christine looked quizzical. 'Forget the I, N, E,' I said. 'What's left? "Christ"!'

Christine gazed at me levelly, blue eyes, honey skin, long blonde hair all tangled. 'Wow,' she said.

'We play on that; we have you crucified on stage!' 'Oh, thanks.' She nodded.

'I know!' I laughed. 'We have you on a giant guitar; you lie on the neck, and it has a sort of cross-brace ... no, there are two ordinary sized guitars forming the cross-piece of the cross. That's it! You start out on that, lying down on it, in the dark, and then you're levered up to vertical, as the lights come up, and you're hanging there on the cross, crucified, then you jump down, taking one of the cross-piece guitars with you, and you launch into the first song!'

Christine snorted, threw herself down on her back, hands behind her head, staring up at the brightly grey plaster of the long, high-ceilinged room. 'Yeah, that would offend a few people,' she agreed. 'Still a bit subtle, all the same.'

I shrugged. 'Images stick. It would work. I'd suggest we actually try it, but they'd lynch us.' I came down beside her, put my arms round her, cradled her.

'Well, they might lynch me,' Christine said. She arched her back; my fingers fell into the muscular hollow her spine left as she flexed herself towards me.

'Aye, well; we cannae be havin that noo, can we, lassie?' I laughed. Still cradling her, I shook her, carefully, always fearful of hurting her.

'No, indeed.' She brought her arms up to my neck. Her entangled blonde hair slid across the white pillow like gold chains over snow (and for a fleeting instant, I thought Suzanne takes you down...), before we kissed.

She got in touch, four years later, to ask me whether I'd mind her using the idea in her stage act; she was in the process of forming her own band, La Rif, and was getting ideas for the stage show together too. I told her she was welcome to use it. I wish I could say I also told her to be careful, to think twice, that it was a silly idea, not serious... but I didn't. I was chuffed; I thought how wonderful it was to have such extensive influence, to have old throwaway ideas fall on fertile ground and bring forth fruit. And I was gleeful, thinking how it would outrage those I despised.

At the time Christine got in touch, Davey had been dead for a couple of years; I had only just started work again, on my own album, after nearly eighteen months of doing not very much of anything at all; it never crossed my mind that Christine would be in any real danger from the stage act. I don't know why, because it should have; maybe Davey's death was still too fresh and I just didn't want to think about anything like that. So I encouraged her.

The reaction was pretty much what you'd expect. Incredible publicity, of course, but mouth-foaming vilification from the moral majority and the megabuck TV evangelists; some southern states wouldn't let Christine appear at all, others would only let her play if she didn't do the guitar-Christ act. Death threats, too, of course.

So who's a guilty boy, then?

Ah, bugger it aw; Ah'm awa tae dae awa wi masel.

Jesus, what else was there for me? I'd been saddled with my great, hulking, graceless body and a face fit for pantomime, I'd been born poor and clumsy and too nice or too weak to be a businessman or a successful crook, so that I could have been forgiven for giving in then, and accepting the type-cast role life seemed to have waiting for me; local freak, somebody people threatened their children with; I could have done my best in a proper job and spent the rest of my days getting nowhere but being a great help to my mates and being called the Big Yin and never scowling when people asked me, What was the weather like up there? or, What cathedral had I fallen off? and maybe I'd have found somebody who loved me and I could love or maybe not, and fathered lots of little ugly kids, but I didn't.

I'd tried to do something more impressive, more memorable, and for a good few years there I thought I'd been doing all right. I'd clawed my way out of being an ugly nonentity and established myself as an unhandsome star; I'd made money, I'd been places and done things and amazed people and pleased them, and I'd scandalised a few too. I could do good things, I could be something else than what seemed to be inevitable. I could create grace, I could compose grace, even if I couldn't be graceful myself.

But every time I thought I'd proved that, something happened to wipe it all out, and I was left in the wreckage, surrounded by the dead and broken dreams, and staring, appalled and confounded, at the proof of my own infectious, terminal, clumsiness. I was the ghost at the feast, the angel of destruction, the kiss of extinction. Marked out for bad luck, like some poisonous insect which advertises its lethal chemistry to potential predators with bright, outrageous colours. I'd cheated; I'd made my own good luck, overpowered that natural signal, ignored that uniform... and unknowingly had shifted the bad luck on to others, so that they suffered in my place.

I walked through the city to Great Western Road, and took a bus there for Old Kilpatrick. It seemed important to walk, or catch buses, or try to hitch a lift; I didn't want to take a train or hire a tax-i; I wanted to start then and there, walking, and just keep going, my journey unplanned but determined, only my destination set and definite.

Maybe it was just a sort of hopeless nostalgia, remembering the time, in my early teens, when a gang of us from Ferguslie had bussed and hitched this way, heading for... Crianlarich, Oban, Mull; however far we could get before our money ran out. We ended up camped on the banks of Loch Lomond, shivering in the rain with our good shoes caked with mud, wondering if there was a hotel bar nearby which wouldn't throw us out.

Whatever. The wet pavements, the north wind, the palely gleaming buildings and the bright, busy sky took me to the great broad road which led over the hills and down the banks of the river and far away. I sat on the bus, not really thinking, but feeling frozen, stuck, rusted up inside.

I watched the faces of the people in the bus, and I listened to their talk. They seemed like real, proper, normal folk and I was the weird one all right, I was the freak. Their lives, with all their diversity and complexities, for all their sudden changes and surprising additions and omissions, must have been of the ordinary stuff, the standard fare.

Mine seemed then to have been even more grotesque and deformed than I'd feared in my darkest moments. The world belonged to these people. I had had colossal effrontery contaminating it with my presence for this long; now was time to pay, now it was time to admit life had been right and I'd been wrong all the time, and dispose of this mutant frame, put to rest this twisted, alien monstrosity.

I felt tired, as the bus moved through the suburbs and the people got on and got off and the day moved from fair to showery and back again. At Old Kilpatrick I must have been dozing; the bus stopped, jerking me awake, and I found myself there, almost in the thin shadow of the Erskine Bridge, by the side of the river. There were low hills and trees on the south bank, and higher steps of grass and stone scarps beyond the houses of the town and the road I was heading for, on the north side.

Hitch-hiking has a lot in common with fishing. I'd forgotten just how brain-numbing hitching could be; any other time I might have been exasperated. Right then, the very zombifying tediousness of it came as a relief. I stood, I watched the cars and vans and trucks join the boulevard heading west; I kept my arm out and thumb up, and tried to look as sane, unmenacing and non-homicidal as I could. So I must have amused a fair few drivers even if, over the course of a couple of hours, none of them stopped.

I left the roadside for the leaky cover of a tree when a shower came on, shivering a little in my great dark coat and thinking in a vague, distant sort of way how ironic it was, to be sheltering from a little drizzle, when I was intending to drown myself in the sea just as soon as I got there. The shower passed, the traffic went on, the cloud-tangled sun fell gradually across the sky towards the firth and the mountains of Argyll.

I thought of Christine, then tried not to. I thought of Davey and could hardly remember him as he had been; I kept seeing his photograph, recalling his guitar and his voice from individual songs, remembering what he looked like in videos. I thought of McCann and Wee Tommy and Betty and Rick Tumber and God help the brutes — I even thought of TB and that stupid bloody pigeon, and like the past twelve years the past one week seemed all jumbled and fragmented and confused, as though I was incapable of holding even that brief amount of time in my head and keeping it coherent.

The rain came on again but I stayed out in it, though people rarely ever stop when you're dripping wet. Grim, unmoving, slowly soaking, I watched the cars and trucks hiss and rumble past, wipers waving, lights shining.

The rain ceased.

It was three o'clock before anybody stopped; a garage mechanic in a Land-Rover pick-up. He could only take me as far as Dumbarton, a few miles down the road. I stood by a roundabout he recommended, in what I reckoned was probably the same shower of rain that had soaked me earlier and moved on.

I got the next hitch within five minutes, just as it was starting to get dark.

'Where ye headin, big fella?'

'Iona,' I said.

'Aw aye. The island?'

'Aye, off Mull.'

'Aw aye. Ye smoke?'

The man who'd stopped for me was seventyish, crouched over the wheel of his Hillman Avenger. Bald; wisps of grey hair. An old, greasy-looking deerstalker lay on the back seat of the car with some parcels and a Frasers bag. Baggy suit and thick glasses. He was going to Arrochar, so he could drop me at Tarbet, about two thirds of the way up the west side of the loch. He held out a packet of Carlton. I was about to refuse, automatically, but then said, 'Yes, thanks.'

I took a cigarette. The old guy leaned over the dash and pushed in a cigar lighter. 'The name's John McCandless, whit's yours, big fella?'

'Dan. Daniel Weir.'

'Bit dreich for hitch-hiking the day, Dan,' Mr McCandless said, giving a sort of laughing cough as we headed up the dual carriageway towards the southern end of the loch. The lighter clicked out and we lit our cigarettes.

'Aye, it is that,' I agreed.

'And whit takes ye away tae Iona, Dan?'

'I've got some friends there. Spending Christmas with them.'

'Very nice.' He looked round at me for a moment. 'Ye no got a bag or somethin with ye, son?'

'No,' I said, pulling on the cigarette. The tobacco-hit was making me feel dizzy. 'I've got some gear out there, left it with them the last time I was there.'

'Aw, aye.'

The cigarette tasted bitter and harsh and reeked of the past. I drank it in, listening to the wipers hum back and forth and the engine roar monotonously; water trickled down the back of my neck, coldly inquiring, sinuously intimate, raising goosebumps.

For a dizzying moment of déjà vu I shivered, and remembered standing in the grey rain of Ferguslie Park, thirteen years ago, setting out with my songs crumpled in my pocket and my hopes none too high, to see a band called Frozen Gold playing at Paisley Tech.

I smoked, watched the rain drops fall and spatter, then smear away under the tired flaying of the wipers. I ought to have asked Mr McCandless what he'd been buying, what he'd done before he retired, if he'd always lived in Arrochar, what his kids were doing, what age the grandchildren were... any number of polite, decent, small-talking things, just to be human and show some interest and a little gratitude at having been picked up on a rainy evening. But I couldn't.

Partly it was selfishness; the same what-the-hell attitude that made me take the fag, even though I'd finally given up smoking five or six years earlier; this was my last evening on earth (not my last day; I'd never get to Iona, or probably even anywhere near the sea, in one go now) so I thought I deserved a little indulgence. But also I didn't feel capable of pretending to be interested; I wasn't, and I couldn't act it. I wasn't really part of other people's world any more.

'Ye in work, Dan?'

'No,' I said. 'Had some once, but... not any more.'

'Aye, bad times.' Mr McCandless shook his head, still staring ahead.

I thought: Here come the thirties; here comes the depression, but Mr McCandless surprised me, and didn't make the usual connection. He just shook his head again and repeated, 'Aye, bad times.'

I smoked my cigarette and watched the rain come down.

When he left me at Tarbet it was almost fully dark and still raining. I stood on the road heading north, thumb out for a while, but nobody stopped. I ignored the big old hotel at the road junction and walked on down the road until the pavement disappeared. As I stood looking into the darkness down the winding loch-side road, the rain came down heavier. There was a small hotel a hundred yards back, its sign lit. I turned back to it.

'Yes?' The man looked me up and down. He looked like the owner.

What did he see? A tall, gangling, brutish man with straggly black hair and a shadow of stubble; hook nose, staring eyes, shoddy long coat, dripping wet.

'I'd like a room, please. Just for one night. I won't be...'

'Sorry, we're full. Christmas, you see.'

'Just a room,' I said. I took out a handful of notes from one pocket. 'I won't be needing breakfast or anything.' I counted out five tenners. 'I can pay in advance; I'll be leaving early.'

The man — a plump English guy, wavy brown hair that looked dyed, and nervous eyes — made a papping noise with his lips, looking down at the money in my hands. 'Ahm ... we might have had a cancellation. I'll have to ask my wife.' He disappeared through to the public bar, sending a wave of warmth and noise out behind him.

His wife was plump too; she looked into my eyes and smiled in a friendly way. 'I'm sorry, Mr ...?'

'Daniel Weir .'

'I'm very sorry, Mr Weir; we are fully booked up at the moment.'

'Your husband thought you might have had a cancellation,' I said, slowly folding up the tenners.

'Well, no; we've a couple who haven't confirmed or arrived yet, but' — she glanced at a wall clock — 'we couldn't really give you their room yet. Another four hours or so, and if they haven't arrived... perhaps then.'

'I see. Thanks anyway. Good night.' I turned back for the doors.

'Good night. I'm sure you can find somewhere else. Which way ...?' But by then I was back out in the rain.

Trucks swept past. The dark, lapping waters of the loch were only a few yards from the road, once it ran beyond the village. The multi-axled trailers on the big trucks went spraying by, massive tyres rumbling. I stood on the damp pavement, wondering why I was bothering to go to Iona. Why not do it here?

I couldn't. Even in my death, in that one thing we all share, I wanted to be different; throwing myself into this picturesque but rather tame old freshwater loch, or mangling myself under some truckload of tin cans or treetrunks, seemed too normal, too close to society. I wanted the wilderness and the waters of the world-ocean. It wasn't ego, even now I don't think it was that; it was ... taste. Appropriateness.

No room at the inn; I sighed and walked back to the big hotel at the road junction, ready for another rejection. They let me in without a murmur, a wee lassie getting me to fill out the Access voucher there and then; it was a double room and she talked me into having not only breakfast ('Oh, you might as well, Mr Weir; it's inclusive'), but dinner too.

I agreed to dinner because I'd stopped feeling tired and started feeling hungry, and it was still not half-past four. Long winter nights. I hadn't allowed for any of this. I was shown to my room. I observed its anonymity for a while, wondering how many hotel rooms I'd been in in my life. I had a shower and dried my clothes over radiators. I dried my hair and watched some kids' television for a little, then turned it off. I dressed, went to the bar, had a few drinks, bought a packet of cigarettes and smoked half of them, had dinner, then went back to the room.

All that time, I was waiting.

Waiting to feel something, waiting to suddenly burst out crying, or to suddenly feel all right again, better once more, or go hysterical and take a running jump out of the nearest high window... but none of that happened.

It was as though some autopilot had taken over, as if a temporary government was running things, some skeleton crew of the mind; the king is dead, long live the regent ...

On Iona it might be possible to know again; that was where I was heading and everything had stopped while I got myself there.

Once I'd arrived, when I was facing those blue-green waves; then I'd start thinking again; then, when I was finally faced with it, the reality of killing myself and just not being any more; opting out of this insane, tasteless, murderous circus where the freaks are too often wiser— but also more despised — than the thronging marks. I was still convinced I'd do it. I was almost looking forward to it. I'd heard that old people could accept death and there was some sort of meta-tiredness which had nothing to do with the quick sleep of night; a lulling, draining, glacial sapping of life's own life over the years, winding up, powering down... I'd thought it was just some sort of excuse, a lie the old told to convince themselves they wouldn't mind dying and so draw the sting of fear. But now... now I wasn't so sure. I thought I understood that tiredness.

I lay down fully clothed on the bed with the lights on, staring at the ceiling, waiting for something to happen.

I must have fallen asleep.

When I woke up I didn't know what time it was. It was still dark and there was music playing in the room next to mine. There was no clock in the room. I turned on the television but there was only white noise on all the channels. I rubbed my face and yawned, then took off my clothes (and thought: For the last time. I'll go in fully clothed tomorrow; quicker, less ridiculous, somehow). I climbed into the wide, cold bed, put the lights out.

The music was too loud. It was going to keep me awake, I knew it, too, which would make it even harder to ignore. It was...

... us.

I hadn't recognised it at first; music always sounds different through walls, but it was Frozen Gold all right; MIRV. It was side one; 'The Good Soldier' faded, and was replaced by '2000 AM'. So I'd slept through 'Oh Cimmaron'. Next 'Single Track' and then 'Slider', and then, very likely as this was probably a tape played on a ghetto-blaster, side two as well.

Too loud. Loud enough for me to be able to make out Christine's voice, Davey's guitar. I lay there, listening, unable to stop it, paralysed and transfixed and frozen.

And at first I laughed, because there is another song, on Personal Effects, which contains the lyrics,

And it was a low, despairing sort of laugh, the laugh of bitter appreciation that life could always kick you when you were down, just to make sure you were still watching the show, and with that laughter came an odd, half-appalled revelation: there was no real division between tragedy and comedy, they were just tags we'd stuck on our hooligan consequences as we stumbled and stampeded through the world's definitive grotesqueries, just a set of different ways of looking at things, from person to person and time to time, and a set of different moods to see them in ...

And Davey sang 'Single Track':

And Christine sang 'Whisper':

And Davey sang 'Apocalypso':

And Christine sang 'The Way It goes':

And together they sang 'Across From The Moon And Down':

And I listened, and my laughs died away, and I just sat there, my heart thumping, and my breath coming quick and shallow, and gradually — only lightly at first — the tears came.

And that was when I grieved for Christine, and finally fell asleep on my damp, salty pillow, to wake the next morning at the sound of a passing train, at once relieved and disappointed, and reluctantly resigned to my life.