Whit

CHAPTER TWENTY - SIX

'Yeah?'

'Good morning. I would like to speak to Topee, please.'

'Speaking.'

'Brother Topee, it is I, Isis.'

'Is! Well, hello there!' My relation whooped, painfully loudly. I held the phone away from my ear for a moment. 'Really? he laughed. 'You're kidding! But, hey! You aren't allowed to use the phone, are you?'

'Not normally. But these are desperate times, Topee.'

'They are? Whangy-dangy! No one ever tells me anything. Where are you, anyway?'

'Glasgow Central station.'

'Yeah? Wow! Great! Hey; come on round and meet the guys; we're gonna have some brekkers and then head out for some jazz.'

'Breakfast would be appreciated.'

'Great! Brilliant! Hey,' he said, as his voice went echoey and small for a moment. 'It's my cousin Isis.' (Topee and I are not, of course, actually cousins; the real relationship is more complicated, but I understood the elision.) 'Aye. She's coming round here.' I heard a lean chorus of male cheers in the background, then Topee's voice again, still echoey. 'Yeah, the neat-lookin' one; the messiah-ess. Aye.'

'Topee,' I said, sighing. 'Don't embarrass me. I don't have the emotional resilience just at the moment.'

'Eh? What? Na, don't worry. So,' he said, 'how come you're using the phone, Is?'

'I think I might need some help.'

'What with?'

'Research.'

'Research?'

'In a library, or maybe a newspaper. I am unused to such things. I wondered if you might be able to assist me.'

'Dunno. Maybe. Give it a go, I suppose. Yeah; why not? You comin' over, then?'

'I shall be there directly.'

'Ha ha! I love the way you talk. Great. The guys are dyin' to meet you. You've got a fan club here.'

I groaned. 'See you soon.'

'You got the address?'

'Yes. I'll be about half an hour.'

'Okay-doke. Give us time to clean the place up.'

I could only conclude that Topee and the three male friends with whom he shared the flat in Dalmally Street had not bothered to do any cleaning whatsoever, or that they normally lived in a state resembling the interior of one of those municipal rubbish lorries which compresses each binload of refuse it picks up.

The flat smelled of beer and the carpet I first stepped onto in the hall stuck to my feet, like something designed to let astronauts walk in a space station. Topee gave me a hug which lifted both my kit-bag and me off my feet - the hall carpet only parted with the soles of my boots reluctantly, I believe - and proceeded to squeeze most of the breath out of me.

Topee is a lively lad, tall and skinny with outrageously good looks: he has long, black, naturally ringletted hair which - happily for him - suits, indeed thrives on, not being combed or cared for, and an electrifyingly dark, exquisitely sculpted face with eyes so piercingly blue the impression they give is of cobalt spikes. He put me down before I fainted.

'Isis!' he yelled, and took a step backwards, going down on his hands and knees, laughing and salaaming. 'I'm not worthy! I'm not worthy!' He was dressed in ripped jeans and a ripped T-shirt under a frayed check shirt.

'Hello, Topee,' I said, as tiredly as I felt.

'She's here!' Topee cried out, and jumped to his feet, dragging me through to the flat's living room, where three other young men sat grinning at a table, playing cards, drinking tea and eating greasy food out of cold aluminium containers with spoons.

I moved a pair of grubby-looking socks off the seat I was offered and sat down. I was duly introduced to Steve, Stephen and Mark and invited to share their breakfast, which consisted of the remains of a communal take-away curry and ditto Chinese from the previous night, bulked out by a plate piled high with huge soft floury rolls. Tea was provided, and such was my hunger I found the cold, oily debris from the previous night quite palatable. The rolls were more appearance than substance, seemingly compose mostly of air, but at least they were fresh.

I chatted to the other three young men, who all suffered from an interestingly diverse range of spots and related skin conditions. They seemed embarrassed by my presence, which I might have found flattering if I'd had the energy to spare. They kept on playing cards as they talked and ate, roundly abusing and cursing each other as though they were homicidally desperate outlaws gambling for the entire proceeds of a robbery rather than, I assumed, reasonably good friends and playing, apparently, for sweets called Smarties.

'Are those earrings, Topee?' I asked, as Topee - finding that some hairs were getting into his mouth as he munched on his lemon chicken and roll - flicked his hair back behind his ear and revealed a set of half a dozen or so small studs and rings set into the rearward edge of his left ear.

He flashed a smile at me. 'Yeah. Cool, eh?'

'Hmm.' I continued digging into my mostly-air roll.

Topee looked hurt. 'You don't like them?' he asked plaintively.

I forbore pointing out that body piercing was frowned upon by our Faith, just as I had questioning Topee's lack of a mud-mark on his forehead. 'I have always felt,' I said, instead, 'that the human body arrives with a more than sufficient number of orifices out of the box, as it were.'

They were all looking at me.

'Yeah,' sniggered the one called Mark. 'To name but one!'

The others snorted and laughed too, after a moment. I just sat and smiled, not entirely sure what the joke was.

Topee looked a little discomfited, but cleared his throat and asked politely what exactly it was I wanted help with.

While giving the details a wide berth, I explained to Topee that I wanted to investigate army records, events in 1948 as reported in newspapers, and possibly old currency. Even as I spoke the words I felt that just mentioning those three areas was already giving too much away, but Topee's eyelids remained unbatted, and I felt I had to involve him. I needed to do this quickly, I felt, and as a student Topee ought to know his way round a library, oughtn't he? Listening to the four lads chat and curse as they played cards, I wondered if this had been wise, but I had made my play now and would have to stick with it.

'Aw, shit, Is!' Topee exclaimed, when I made clear the need for haste. 'You wanna do this now? Aw, rats, man! This is Saturday, Is!' Topee said, laughing and waving his arms about. His pals nodded enthusiastically. 'We have to go out and get steamin' and listen to jazz and stuff and do a pub crawl or come back here and drink cans and bet on the football scores and go out and get paralytic and get black-pudding suppers and chips and go to the QMU and dance like maniacs and try and get off with nurses and end up back here having an impromptu soirée, like as not and throw up in the garden and throw things out of the window and call for a pizza and play bowls in the hall with empty cans!'

He laughed.

'You can't interfere with a… with a months-old tradition like that just because you need to do this research shit! Fuck, if we wanted to do that sort of stuff we'd be writing our essays! I mean, do we look like sad students? Come on; we're trying to resurrect a fine student tradition here. We have to party!'

'Party!' the others chorused.

I looked at Topee. 'You told me students were all very boring and exam-oriented these days.'

'They are, mostly!' Topee said, gesticulating. 'We party-'

'Party!' the other three chorused again.

'-animals are practically an endangered species!'

'I can't imagine why,' I sighed. 'Well, just-'

'Oh, come, Is; let your… I mean, get your party-'

'Party!'

'-hat on. We can do all that stuff on Monday.'

'Topee,' I said, smiling faintly. 'Just point me in the right direction. I'll do it myself.'

'You won't come out with us?' he asked, looking deflated.

'Thank you, but no. I'd like to get this done today. It's all right; I'll do it myself.'

'Not at all! If you won't come out with us, I'll come out with you; we'll do all this stuff. We'll all help! Except you have to come out for a drink with us tonight, right?' He looked round the others.

They looked at him and then at me.

'Na.'

'No, don't think so, Tope.'

'Nut; I wannae to go to the jazz.'

Topee looked crestfallen for a moment. 'Oh. Oh well,' he said, with an expansive shrug, waving with his arms. 'Just me, then.' He laughed. 'Fuck. Talked myself into that one, didn't I?'

The others murmured assent to this.

Topee slapped his forehead, staring at me. 'I suppose I have to wash your feet, too, don't I? I forgot!'

The others looked up, surprised.

I took a guess at the state of cleanliness of any basin, bowl or container suitable for feet-washing the flat might possess. 'That won't be necessary just now, thank you, Topee.'

'Currency,' Topee said, a little later in the kitchen as we tidied away the breakfast things.

'A bank-note,' I told him.

'Yeah. Cool. My Director of Studies collects stamps and stuff. I wonder if he knows anybody collects notes? I'll give him a call.' He grinned. 'Got his home number; I'm always calling in for extensions. Just chuck the stuff in there,' he said, pointing at one of three black polythene bags by the side of an overflowing bin. He strode out into the hall. I opened the black bag, averting my nose from the smell that emanated from it, and dumped the crushed, empty take-away containers into it. I tied up the sack and did the same with the other two, breathing through my mouth to combat the stench.

I started cleaning dishes. Anything to be busy. I'd been right about the washing-up basin. Topee was back a few minutes later. He stared at the washing-up suds as though he had never seen such a phenomenon before, a thesis the state of the kitchen did nothing to contradict. 'Oh, yeah! Like, well done, Is!'

'What did your Director of Studies say?' I asked him.

'We need a notaphilist,' he said, grinning.

'A what?'

'A notaphilist,' he repeated. 'Apparently there's one in Wellington Street.' He glanced at his watch. 'Open till noon on Saturdays. Reckon we can make it.'

I found it quite easy to drag myself away from the washing-up. We caught a bus into the city centre and found the address in Wellington Street, a little basement shop under a grand, tall Victorian office building of recently cleaned fawn sandstone.

H. Womersledge, Numismatist and Notaphilist, said the peeling painted sign. The place was pokey and dark and smelled of old books and something metallic. A bell jangled as we entered. I tried to convince myself that these were not really retail premises. There were glass cases, counters and tall display cabinets everywhere, all full of coins, medals and bank-notes, the latter held in little transparent plastic stands or folders like photographic albums.

A middle-aged man appeared from the back of the shop. I'd expected some little old bent-over octogenarian sporting a patina of dandruff and dust, but this fellow was my side of fifty, smoothly plump, and dressed in a white polo-neck top and cream slacks.

'Morning,' he said.

'Yo,' said Topee, bouncing from one foot to the other. The man looked unimpressed.

I tipped my hat. 'Good morning, sir.' I brought out the bank-note and placed it on the glass counter between us, over dully gleaming silver coins and colourfully ribboned medals. 'I wondered what you could tell me about this…' I said.

He picked up the note delicately, held it up to the dim light from the one small window, then switched on a tiny but powerful table lamp and studied the note briefly.

'Well, it's pretty self-explanatory, really,' he said. 'Ten-pound note, Royal Scot Linen, July 'forty-eight.' He shrugged. 'They were produced in this form from May 'thirty-five to January 'fifty-three, when the RSL was taken over by the Royal Bank.' He turned the note over a couple of times, handling it the way I imagined a card-sharp did a card. 'Quite an ornate note, for the time. It was actually designed by a man called Mallory who was later hanged for murdering his wife, in nineteen forty-two.' He gave us a suitably wintry smile. 'I suppose you want to know how much it's worth.'

'I imagined it was worth ten pounds,' I said. 'If it was still legal tender.'

'Not legal tender,' the man said, grinning and shaking his head. 'Worth about forty quid, mint, which this isn't. If you were selling I could give you fifteen, but even that's only because I like round numbers.'

'Hmm,' I said. 'Well, perhaps not, then.'

I stood, looking down at the note, just letting the time pass. The man turned the note over on the counter one more time.

'Well, then,' I said, after Topee had started to get agitated at my side. 'Thank you, sir.'

'You're welcome,' the man said, after a moment's hesitation.

I picked up the note and folded it back inside my pocket. 'Good day,' I said, tipping my hat.

'Yeah,' the man said, frowning, as I turned and walked to the door, followed by Topee. I opened the door, jangling the bell again. 'Ah, wait a minute,' the man said. I turned and looked back.

He waved one hand, as though rubbing out something on an invisible screen between us. 'No, no, I'm not going to offer you more or anything; that's all it's worth, really, but… could I have another look at it?'

'Of course.' I went back to the counter and handed him the note again. He frowned at it. 'Mind if I take a copy of this?' he asked.

'Will it be harmed?' I asked.

He smiled tolerantly. 'No, it won't.'

'All right.'

'Won't be a minute.' He disappeared into the back of the shop. There were a series of quiet, mechanical noises. He was back a moment later, with the note and a copy of both its sides on a large sheet of paper. He handed me the note again. 'You got a phone number I can reach you at?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Topee, do you mind… ? '

'Eh? What? Oh! Like, hey, no; no, on you go. Pas de probleme.'

I gave the man Topee's phone number.

'Now what?' Topee asked on the street outside.

'Army records, and old newspapers.'

There are occasions when I find pieces of technology I can't help liking. The fiche reader and built-in copying machine that I was directed to at the Mitchell Library proved to be one such device. It was like a large vertically oriented television set screen, but was really just a sort of projector, throwing onto the screen the highly magnified images of old newspapers, documents, journals, ledgers and other papers which had been photographed and placed -hundreds at a time - on pieces of thin, laminated plastic. In this manner, many years' worth of broadsheet newspapers that might have filled a room could be condensed into a small filing box that one could carry comfortably with one hand.

By working two small wheels, one could manipulate the glass bed the fiches rested upon and so rove at will across the hundreds of pages recorded on each plastic sheet. When one had found a sheet one wanted to record, all that had to be done was to press a button, and the contents of the screen would be transferred by a photocopying process to a sheet of ordinary paper.

I suspect it was something about the mechanical nature of the whole business - despite the machine's obvious reliance on electrical power - that attracted me. If you held the riches up to the light you could just make out the tiny shapes of the newspapers, easily identifying large headlines and photographs by the black and grey blocks they made on the white surface. It was obvious, in other words, that the information was physically there, albeit in microscopically reduced form, not macerated into digits or stripes of magnetism plastered on a bit of tape or a little brown disk and intrinsically unreadable without the intervention of a machine.

The fiches could probably be used without the machine, if one had a bright light and a very strong magnifying glass, and that seemed to me to define the limit of acceptable technology; Luskentyrians have traditionally had an almost instinctive suspicion of things which boast of having few or no moving parts. It makes us incompatible, as a rule, with electronics, but this device seemed just about tolerable. I was sure Brother Indra would like this machine. I thought again of Allan, using the portable phone in the office storeroom, and felt my teeth grind as I read the ancient headlines I had come here to inspect.

I was looking at old copies of Scottish and British newspapers from 1948. I glanced at one or two from the early months of the year, but was concentrating on the second half of the year. I was not entirely sure what it was I might find; I was just looking for something that caught my eye.

I sat alone at the machine, having given Brother Topee the task of finding out how one might investigate an individual who had been in the British Army; he had pointed me towards the Mitchell Library from an army recruitment centre in Sauchiehall Street. I had left him standing in a queue there; I was hoping he wouldn't join up by mistake, though with those earrings he was probably safe.

I had plenty of newspapers to choose from: The Herald, Scotsman, Courier, Dispatch, Mirror, Evening Times, Times, Sketch… I started with the Scotsman, for no better reason than that was the paper Mr Warriston took, and I had once picked it up and surreptitiously read a few pages on the first occasion I'd visited his house in Dunblane.

I read of the assassination of Gandhi, the formation of Israel, the Berlin airlift, Harry S. Truman elected President in the United States, the founding of the two Korean republics, the austerity Olympics in London, continuing rationing in Britain and the abdication of Queen Wilhelmina in Holland.

What I was looking for were shipwrecks, bank robberies, mysterious disappearances, people being washed overboard from troopships or going missing from army bases. After a quick look through a selection of months, I decided to restrict my search to that of September 1948 initially, reckoning that the chances were that whatever I was looking for had taken place then. I had got to the last September issue of the Scotsman without success when Topee appeared in the little alcove off the upper gallery where the fiche reading machine was situated.

'Any luck?' I asked.

He sat down on another chair, breathing hard as though he'd been running. 'No; it's been fucking privatised, man.'

'What? The army?'

'No; the records. All the armed forces' records. Used to be some civil service department, but now it's something called "Force Facts plc" and you have to pay for each inquiry and they're not open over the weekend anyway. Hilarious, eh? Total.' He shook his head. 'How about you?'

'Nothing yet. Done the Scotsman; about to start on the Glasgow Herald. If you could take the right-hand side of the screen while I read the left, we'll get through this a lot quicker,' I told him, making room for his seat.

He scraped in beside me, glancing soulfully at his watch. 'The guys will be watching the jazz by now,' he said in a small voice.

'Topee,' I said. 'This is important. If you don't feel you can devote your full concentration to the task, just say so and run off to play with your pals.'

'No, no,' he said, pushing back his hair and sitting forward in his chair to peer intently at the screen.

I took the last Scotsman fiche off the glass plate and put the first Glasgow Herald fiche on. Topee continued to stare at the screen. 'Is?'

'What?'

'What am I looking for, anyway?'

'Shipwrecks.'

'Shipwrecks.'

'Well, maybe not actual shipwrecks,' I said, recalling that Zhobelia had said there hadn't been any shipwrecks at the time. 'But something like shipwrecks.'

Topee grimaced, looking up at the ceiling. 'Right. Cool. Anything else?'

'Yes. Anything that rings a bell.'

'Eh?'

'Anything that sounds familiar. Anything that sounds like it might be linked to the Order.'

He looked at me. 'You mean you don't know what we're looking for.'

'Not exactly,' I admitted, scanning my half of the display. 'If I knew exactly what it was there wouldn't be any need to look.'

'Right,' he said.'… So I've got to look for something, like, really carefully, but I don't know what it is I'm looking for except it might be something like a shipwreck, that isn't?'

'That's right.'

From the corner of my eye, I could see that Topee continued to study me. I half expected him to rise from his chair and walk out, but instead he just turned back to the screen and pulled his seat closer. 'Wow,' he chuckled. 'Like, Zen!'

An hour went by. Topee swore he was paying attention but he always claimed to be finished at the same time as me, and I know I read very quickly indeed. Still, I had calculated that we would be lucky to finish all the records of all the papers for September 1948 by the time the library closed, so I had no choice for now but to trust his word. After that first hour, Topee started humming and whistling and making little sibilant noises with his tongue, lips and teeth.

I suspected it was jazz.

The next hour grew to middle age.

I tried with all my might to concentrate, but occasionally I would drift away from my task and start reliving the previous night, hearing Zhobelia tell me in her matter-of-fact way that what I had thought a personal miracle - a blessed affliction, one wise wound upon another - was something I shared through time with generations of my female ancestors, including her. Did that make any more sense of what I felt when I envisioned something? I had no idea. It put my visions in a sort of context but it made the experience no less mysterious. Did it mean anything that God chose to order Their miracles in this manner? I could not shake off the feeling that if there was one thing Salvador had got right it was that we are not even capable yet of understanding the purpose God has in mind for us. We can only struggle through, doing the best we can and trying neither to hide behind ignorance nor over-estimate the reach of our knowledge. I kept having to drag myself back to the task in hand, trawling the past for the key to the present.

And found it.

It was in the Glasgow Courier, dated Thursday, 30th September, 1948. It was as well I was sitting down; the experience of dizziness induced by a familial revelation did not seem to be a condition I was becoming inured to, despite the frequency with which it had swept through me in the past few days. My sight seemed to go a bit swimmy for a while, but I just sat and waited for it to clear.

I read on, while Topee read, or pretended to read, beside me.

Civilian and military police are today seeking Private Moray Black (28) a private of the Dumbartonshire Fusiliers, who is wanted for questioning in connection with an incident at Ruchill Barracks, Glasgow, on Monday night when it is understood an attack took place on a junior officer in the Pay Corps and an amount of money was subsequently found to be missing. Private Black, who is described as five feet ten inches in height and weighing eleven stone five pounds with brown hair, is known to have connections in the Govan area…

The words seemed to dance in front of me. I let them settle down

… Mother believed to be an unmarried textile worker in Paisley… brought up by his grandmother, a member of the Grimsby Brethren, a charismatic sect… gang member… alleged racketeer during War… national service…

'Finished!' Topee said.

I turned and smiled, wondering that Topee did not hear my heart thudding in my chest.

'Right,' I said, and put the fiche back in its box. 'Topee, could you ask a librarian whether it is permitted to have a glass of water or a cup of tea here, at the desk? I'm thirsty, but I don't want to leave…'

'Yup!' he said, and bounded out of his seat as though released by a spring.

I put the fiche back in the machine and took a couple of copies of it while he was away. I quickly searched the other papers. They had the same story, though the Courier seemed to have the most detail; their reporter had talked exclusively to Private Black's grandmother. I went to another shelf and selected the box with October's newspapers in it.

On Saturday the 2nd of October there was another report in the Courier to the effect that Black was still being hunted. The junior officer who had been attacked in the incident was recovering in hospital, concussed.

On the same page, a familiar word attracted my eye; it turned out to be the name of a ship. It appeared in a report which stated that the SS Salvador, a general cargo vessel of 11,500 tons registered in Buenos Aires, which had sailed from Govan docks on the morning of the 28th September bound for Quebec, New York, Colon and Guayaquil, had encountered heavy weather off the Outer Hebrides on the night of the 30th, and suffered structural damage. The ship was now limping back to Glasgow. Amongst its cargo had been railway carriages and other rolling stock, bound for South America. Several carriages lashed to its deck had been washed overboard during the storm.

My God.

I read the article about the SS Salvador again, and looked up at the ceiling.

My Grandfather was washed ashore after a train wreck?

We got back to Topee's flat. Stephen reported, drunkenly, that there had been a message from a Mister Wormsludge - har har - asking me to ring his home number.

I rang Mr Womersledge. He said the serial number on the ten-pound note I had shown him was one of a consecutive batch which had been stolen from the Army Pay Corps in September 1948. The note might be more valuable than he'd said originally, and he could now offer me fifty pounds for it. I said, Thank you, I'd think about it, and put down the phone.

As the final teetering keystone of my belief in my Grandfather finally tumbled down about me and the world I had known seemed to fall away like unseasonable sprink before the sudden thaw, Topee asked, Hey, were we, like, ready to go out for a drink, like, yet?

I - of course - said, Yes.