Michael built up — I didn’t care.
A car sounded a horn at me — I’d walked on the road, shouted, ‘Go fuck yourself!’ I turned to see a school- run mum in a Stockbridge tractor. She had the revs up too high, but that engine was way behind me in the burn stakes. I brought my fist down on the bonnet. She gasped at me, ready to raise herself and confront me, but something in her advised against it. She put the foot down and forced me to jump aside; I let out a kick at the back fender as she went. Called after her, ‘Fuck off, you snooty cow!’
Eyes lit on me, all the way up and down the street. A daft-looking tourist in a tartan cape dropped jaw.
‘What? Anyone else fucking want some?’ I yelled.
People took off in every direction. I got off the road, headed to the World’s End pub. I stormed through the door, straight to the bar. The place looked dead. Usually this deep in the heart of tourist central was stowed out.
Barman came over. ‘Yes, what can I get you?’
‘Whisky.’ I said the word before I felt its consequence register on my mind.
I watched the barman. ‘A blend or a malt?’
I didn’t care. ‘Whatever.’
He creased his brows, went to the wall behind the bar. I watched him put a glass to the bottle of Teacher’s, fill a measure.
He placed it before me, gave me a price.
I grabbed a crumple of bills and coins from my pocket, dumped the lot on the bar. He fished out the right amount and left me.
I stared at the glass of scoosh. I didn’t need to raise it to my nose to pick up the aroma. I could have guessed this blend in a room of one hundred others. I felt the essence of it seeping into me. I was calmed by it. I knew this was my proper place. I knew I was home. I raised the glass and stared at it in the full light. One sip, that’s all it was going to take. One little, insignificant sip of liquid. One moment on the lips, in the mouth, and over the throat. One second in the stomach, and then…
I lowered the glass.
Picked up my money.
The barman looked at me as if he considered calling for assistance.
I turned away, left the bar.
On the street a piper was playing now. The skirl of the pibroch attracted a crowd of tourists, but it left me cold. I wanted to be away from all things familiar. I wanted to be in a new place, where there weren’t memories on every street wherever I looked. I needed to escape my past, but my future didn’t seem to hold any alternatives.
I put up the collar on my Crombie and schlepped up the Mile. At the Radisson Hotel I got in a taxi and gave the driver the address for the Burlington Practice. He checked me in the rear-view mirror; obviously the name registered. Edinburgh cabbies know better than to make conversation with nut-jobs — they have enough experience of ferrying them about in a city full of them. I was grateful for his silence.
I fell into a state of high anxiety; figured Dr Naughton had sussed this tendency in me right from the off. I thought about my meeting with Fitz, what it meant. I was heading down a dark path. The Undertaker had an interest in my brother’s affairs — fucking hell, Michael, what were you thinking? I wished him alive so I could grab him by the shoulders, shake some sense into him. I saw his face before me, questioned what level of desperation drew him to get into such a racket of shit. Did he know what he was doing? Surely he did, my brother was nobody’s fool. I wondered how bad things had got for him, could see the escalation of the stakes as he got in deeper and deeper… and then what? I needed to know the how and the why and the who. I wasn’t giving up until I did.
The taxi pulled up. I passed the cabbie a ten-spot, schlepped to the door of the practice. The path had been cleared of snow, but icicles still hung on the railings. Inside, my doctor was impassive, a bland, unreadable expression on her as she greeted me.
‘Don’t you want to take your coat off, Mr Dury?’ she said.
‘I thought you were going to call me Gus.’
She didn’t respond to that. I kept my coat on and she brought me a bottle of water. I refused to take it and she placed it on the floor beside me. I acted like a child; I felt as helpless. Her hair looked wet. It smelled of apples; the thought of it made my eyes moisten, reminded me of a vague sensation from childhood. Scrumping for apples — how old was I when I did that? Where was Michael at the time? God, why did I have to think of that now? Was there a single moment in my past I could face again?
I looked at the pine shelves with the doctor’s slim collection of books on them, tried to read the titles, distract myself. ‘I thought you’d have more books.’
She smiled at me, grateful I was becoming more chatty. ‘Everything’s online now.’
I hadn’t thought, said, ‘I see.’
She put her hair back in a band. ‘I’m sorry: tried to cram in a trip to the gym…’
That explained the wet hair, the smell of apples. ‘What shampoo is that?’
She blushed — seemed out of place for her, ‘Palmolive.’
‘Oh, right… It smells familiar.’
I calmed down a notch. Got up, removed my jacket. The cycle helmet and Karrimor still sat in the corner.
As I returned to my seat, Dr Naughton spoke: ‘I wanted to ask you about the kind of people around you at present.’
‘Okay, go on.’
‘What are they like?… Affectionate? Impatient? Bad-tempered?’
I shook my head. Who did she want me to think of? Debs, Mac, maybe Fitz? Said, ‘Some are, some aren’t.’
The question wasn’t the opener she’d hoped for. She paused a moment, then tried again. ‘I was thinking about what we spoke of towards the end of the last session.’
‘Oh, yes.’ We’d spoken about Michael.
‘Would you feel comfortable telling me something about your brother?’
I shrugged. I felt strangely drawn out of myself now I was here, said, ‘Guess so.’
‘Could you tell me about something that happened to you both?’
‘What kind of thing?’
‘Perhaps something from your childhood.’
I remembered something. It was the smell of apples that reminded me.
‘I robbed an orchard when I was about twelve, brought home bags of apples. They were cooking apples and when my father came in from the pub, utterly blootered as usual, he tried to eat one. He spat it out and then threw the whole lot in the midden at the bottom of the yard.’
Dr Naughton seemed interested. ‘Is there more to the story?’
Was there ever. I went on, ‘The next day my brother, he was only young, about four, found all the apples spilling over the midden and I told him the fairies had left them… My mam had told me the midden was a fairy rath when I was his age, that’s where I got the idea.’
Reliving the memory now, in front of the doctor, didn’t seem so hard. I felt a glow remembering my young brother. ‘So Michael must have spent the day digging in the midden, looking for the fairies, and about dinner time he appeared at the table in tears. He was covered head to toe in muck and carried a hell of a stench.’
I could see him now, his face smeared black with soot and dirt. ‘My father stamped his fist on the table: “What is this you are bringing into my house?” His voice trembled so much that it seemed his next word might hurl the plates and dishes to the floor.’
I smiled as Michael’s words came back to me. ‘My brother said he was looking for the fairies: “It’s a fairy rath in the yard… Angus showed me.” In a flash, all eyes shifted on me, then my father came racing towards me and lifted me from my chair. I knew I was in for trouble as he dragged me by the hair into the yard.’
I stopped talking.
Dr Naughton gently prompted me: ‘Go on. What happened next?’
‘My father grabbed my head, his whole hand fitted round it, and then he pushed me face down in the midden. There was the sound of shuffling as my mother and family came to see what would happen next and then my father
