One Good Turn

“Get over it, Jackson,” Julia said. “The serfs are free and roaming the land, buying shares in high-risk Asian markets.”

The funny thing was, sometimes she sounded just like his wife. His wife was also an argumentative person. (“I only argue with people I like,” Julia said. “It means I feel secure with you.” Generally speaking, Jackson only argued with people he didn’t like.) His ex-wife, he reminded himself. Yet another “ex”in his life. They were divorced, she was remarried and pregnant with another man’s child, and yet he still thought of her-technically rather than emotionally-as his wife. Maybe that was the Catholic in him.

And Julia was wrong. The serfs were all watching reality television, the new opium of the people. He watched it himself sometimes, he had satellite broadband in France, and couldn’t believe the ignorance and insanity of people’s lives. Sometimes when Jackson turned on the television, he got the feeling that he was living in a terrible version of the future, one he didn’t remember signing up for.

He fought his way past a long queue knotted up in the doorway. They were queuing for some comedy thing. He found himself looking at a poster, a photograph of a man making a dementedly comic face. RICHARD MOTT- COMIC VIAGRA FOR THE MIND, it said. It took a lot to make Jackson laugh. In my day, he thought, comedy was funny. “In my day”-that was what old people said, their days already behind them.

Back out in what passed for daylight, he was greeted by ancient, tall tenements staring blankly at each other from either side of the street, making it feel more like a tunnel, making it feel as if night had fallen. If there had been no people around, you might have mistaken it for a film set of a Dickens novel. You might have mistaken it for the past itself.

Julia said it was a good venue to be in, although they had been disappointed when they had failed “to get into the Traverse.” “But really this is good,” Julia insisted. “Central, lots of people.” She was right about there being a lot of people, the place was crowded, “hoaching,” his father would have said. Jackson’s father was a miner, from Fife originally, and might not have had much time for this expensive, thriving capital city. Too chichi. “Chichi” was something Julia said. Jackson’s vocabulary seemed to be full of other people’s words these days, French people’s mainly as that was now his “place of domicile,” which was a different thing from “home.”

Other than being conceived on holiday in Ayrshire (according to his father, anyway), Jackson had never been to Scotland before, he had never given it much thought, but now it struck him as odd (and psychologically revealing) that he had never visited the land of his father. When he stepped off the train in Waverley Station yesterday, he had been expecting the 50 percent of his genes that were Scottish to recognize their heritage. He thought perhaps he would discover an emotional link with a past he’d never known, walk down a street and the faces would feel familiar, turn a corner or climb a stair and there would be an epiphany of sorts, but in fact Edinburgh felt more foreign to him than Paris did.

As he pushed his way past the crowd, he tried to orient himself toward the Castle. The ancient bird part of his brain that was usually so good at directions seemed to have gone on holiday since his arrival in Edinburgh, probably because he had been reduced to being a pedestrian (“reduced” being the apposite word here, because, let’s face it, pedestrians are inferior creatures). To understand the topography of Edinburgh his brain needed to be connected directly to the compass of a steering wheel. Jackson was a man for whom having a car was an extension of his thinking. In moving to France, he had abandoned his old love, the BMW, and now had a hundred fifty thousand Euros’ worth of brand-new Mercedes tucked away in his barn back home.

At the moment, of course, all he had was a Day Saver ticket in his pocket. He didn’t understand how people managed without cars. “They walk,” Julia said. Julia didn’t walk much, she took the tube or rode her bike. Jackson couldn’t think of anything more dangerous than riding a bike in London. (“Have you always worried this much,” Julia asked him, “or is it just since you met me?”) Julia had a reckless streak a mile wide, Jackson wondered if it was because she didn’t think she could die or because she didn’t care if she died. Apart from one remaining sister, all of Julia’s family members were dead, a fact which seemed to make her treat existence with an odd nonchalance. (“We all have to die sometime.” Yes, but not yet.)

“Let’s face it, Jackson, you feel unmanned without a car,” Julia said to him on the train journey up from London. “Unmanned” was such a Julia word-archaic and theatrical.

“No, I don’t,” Jackson said. “I feel as if I can’t get anywhere.”

“You’re getting somewhere now,” she pointed out as they passed through Morpeth Station. “Here we go, up to Scotland,” Jackson had said at the beginning of the journey, and now, hours later, in a typically Julia-esque nonsequitur, she turned to him and said, “And you don’t say ‘up’from London. You say ‘down’because it’s the capital.”

“I know that,” Jackson said. “I’m not a hick. I just think it’s stupid-Edinburgh’s a capital city as well, and the whole of the north of England is blatantly geographically up.”

“Golly,” Julia said mildly, “I didn’t know you felt so strongly about it.”

Julia was wrong, it wasn’t not having a car that had unmanned him. It was the money. Real men had to earn a hard crust. They had to labor at the coal face, both real and metaphorical. They didn’t spend their days filling up their iPods with sad country songs and feeding apples to French donkeys.

He exited Julia’s venue just in time to witness a silver Peugeot get shunted by a Honda Civic (a car for losers if ever there was one). The guy who got out of the Honda was spitting mad, quite unnecessarily so, as his bumper didn’t even look dented. He caught the accent-English, like himself. Strangers in a strange land. Honda Man was wearing driving gloves. Jackson had never understood driving gloves. The Peugeot guy wasn’t big, but he was wiry and tough-looking, the type who appeared as if he could take care of himself but whose body language was all about conciliation, which made Jackson think he was used to being in hairy situations-army or police. He felt a little tug of empathy with the Peugeot driver.

Honda Man, on the other hand, was a nutter up for a rammy, and when he suddenly produced a baseball bat Jackson realized he must have had it with him when he got out of the car. Premeditated GBH, the ex-policeman in him was thinking. They had different terms for it up here, they probably had different terms for everything up here. There was a dog in the back of the Honda, he could hear the big bass rumble of its bark, could see its snouty face attacking the car window as if it could push its way out and finish off the Peugeot guy. It was true what they said about people resembling their dogs. Julia still lamented the loss of her childhood pet, Rascal, an enthusiastic terrier. That was Julia, an enthusiastic terrier.

At the sight of the baseball bat, Jackson was suddenly all instinct. He started weaving his way through the crowd quickly, on the balls of his feet, all ready for whatever, but before he got close enough to the scene to do anything, someone in the queue had thrown what looked like a briefcase and knocked the Honda driver for six. Jackson held back and watched. He didn’t want to get involved if there was no need. Honda Man picked himself up and took off, and within minutes a police car was on the scene. The sound of the approaching siren made Jackson’s heart beat faster. You didn’t hear police sirens in rural France. Two policewomen, both young, one prettier than the other, climbed out of the car, authoritative in their yellow fluorescent jackets and bulky belts.

The guy who had thrown the briefcase was sitting on the curb, looking as if he were going to pass out. Jackson said, “Are you okay?”to him. “Try putting your head between your legs.”An acrobatic, rather sexually charged-sounding suggestion, but the guy tried to do as he was told.

“Can I help you?” Jackson said, crouching down next to him. “What’s your name?”

The guy shook his head as if he didn’t know. He was as white as milk.

“My name’s Jackson Brodie,” Jackson said. “I used to be a policeman.” He experienced a sudden, unexpected shiver. That was it, that was his whole life summed up in two sentences: My name’s Jackson Brodie. I used to be a policeman. “Can I help you?”

“I’ll be all right,” the guy said with an effort. “Sorry. Martin Canning,” he added.

“No need to apologize to me,” Jackson said. “I’m not the guy you floored.”That was a mistake.The guy looked horrified.

“I didn’t attack him. I was trying to help him,” he said, pointing at the Peugeot driver, who was still in the middle of the street and now being tended to by paramedics.

“I know, I know,” Jackson said. “I saw it. Look, I’ll give you my mobile number. Give me a call if you need your story backed up, if the police or the Honda Man driver gives you any trouble. But I’m sure they won’t. Don’t worry.” Jackson wrote down his number on the back of a Fringe-show flyer that he had stuffed in his pocket and handed it