huge, quiet, kind Highland man with a soft voice and hard hands... Jesus, I could almost see him now...
But I still wanted to see her. I'd come here; I couldn't just turn back. Besides, she might hear I was here, after all; they can't get many six-six monsters stopping off in Arisaig in the middle of winter. And how would she feel if she knew I'd been here and not come to see her, if Glen was right about her being pleased to see me? But I knew it wasn't going to work; you just can't do things like this and get away with it. So why not leave now, with the dream at least still intact, so that you'll never know whether it might just have worked? Wouldn't that be salvaging something? Isn't that where the smart money would go? God, impossible to know what to do. I reached into the coat pocket where my change was. My fingers closed round a coin.
I thought,
I brought the coin out; it was a fifty pence piece. And it was tails.
I put it back in my pocket, in with the rest of the change. I finished my drink and took up my bag and took the glass back to the bar.
One thing about not knowing what to do, and tossing a coin to decide, having made up your mind you'll definitely do whatever the coin says: it sure as hell lets you know what you really want to do, if it says the wrong thing.
I left the bag with the barman, booked a room for the night and I went to the local post office, to ask where Jean Webb lived.
'Och aye; Mrs Keiller, aye, she said her maiden name was Webb.' The old lady in the post office seemed to be quite used to having hulking, brutish strangers ask after local women. 'She has the one wee lassie, that's right.'
'Yes, Dawn,' I said, still desperate to prove I knew them and I wasn't some homicidal sex maniac come to rape and murder them both. The old lady didn't seem bothered in the least.
'Aye, that's her name. They've a house at Back of Keppoch.'
'Is that far?'
'Och, no; just over the headland. A mile, perhaps.' The old lady looked at the clock above the counter. 'Of course, she'll be at work right now.'
'Oh.' What had I been thinking of? It hadn't occurred to me she'd be working. Idiot.
'Aye, Mrs Keiller works in the office at the fish farm, at Lochailort. Do you know where that is? You'll have passed it on your way.'
'Um, yes...
'Here, I'll show you on the map.'
I bought the map in the end. Mrs Gray— Elsie — said if I wanted I could phone the fish farm from there, if it was urgent. I declined the offer. I'd go to Jean's when she got back from work.
I sat in the bar, gazing out to the rocky confines of the sea loch beyond the roofs of Arisaig, sipping export shandies, because the last thing I wanted to be, when I saw Jean, was drunk.
I am a sentimental man, a weak man, a pliable man, and nobody is better at twisting me round their little finger than I am.
I am totally selfish, even when I'm being selfless. I give everything away, I come up here on a hopeful, hopeless mission of the heart, seeming to give all for love, but I'm not really. I've come here for, at the very least, absolution. I want Jean to confess me, to say that it's all all right, that I'm not really a bad man, that the last twelve, thirteen years haven't been wasted; oh God, she's not going to say, Stay with me and be my love, but she might put her hands on my poor fevered brow, she might let me kiss the ring. Absolution; forgiveness, hail Jean, full of grace...
We are all selfish. Sell up and go to the slums of Calcutta, work with lepers in the jungle... at my most cynical I ask whether even such things are not selfish, because it is easier for you to live with yourself having done that, knowing you have done all you could, rather than suffer the cramps of conscience. Throw yourself on the grenade; you do so knowing you are the hero, and there will be no more times when the terror of death might make you turn and flee.
But maybe I'm just a bad, cynical man.
So, Weird goes looking for his old love. Surrender. It looks like adventure but really it's hiding. Ah, Jayzuz, the ways we invent to get away from our responsibilities.
The only thinking animal on the goddamn planet, and what do we spend most of our time trying not to do?
Correct.
We join armies, we enter monasteries or nunneries, we adopt the party line, we believe what we read in ancient books or shit newspapers or what we're told by plastic politicians, and all we're ever trying to do is give somebody else the responsibility for thinking. Let us enter this order, obey that one; never mind we end up being told to massacre or torture or simply believe the most absurd thing we've ever heard; at least it's not all our fault.
Nothing to do with us, John; we just did what we was told...
And Love; isn't that just another route to the same thing?
I did it for the wife and kids. That's what it's all about isn't it, I mean? Sacrifice; work hard...
Ah, God, it's better than outright selfishness, spending all the money, beating the wife and terrorising the weans, but amn't I just using something similar to get away from my own responsibilities? Simulating my own financial death through a legal trick, going off on this ridiculous adventure... playing, just playing. Looking for a way out, a way back to the cradle and the milk-wet breast.
Who am I trying to kid?
(Answers on a postcard, please, to...)
The winter afternoon darkened.
I ate in the hotel, studying my newly bought map, humming my new tune and playing around with it. The map showed there was a walk round the coast from Arisaig to Back of Keppoch. I thought about taking that route to the address Mrs Gray had given me, but it was getting dark and I'd probably break my neck falling over some cliff. That would be ironic; putting my Will into effect while still alive and then dying the next day.
I'd take the main road and risk getting run over by a car instead.
I got to Jean's house just after four. It was new, a bungalow, one of about half a dozen under a group of pines, looking out over a curved beach and a rocky bay to the Sound of Sleat and the distant mountains of Skye.
The house was dark. I sat down on a wall, to wait. I hoped there was nobody else in any of the other houses, a couple of which had lights on, who'd look out and see me sitting there... then felt annoyed with myself, for being so easily embarrassed, so prone to guilt. I put my chin in my hand and tried to ponder the links between guilt and embarrassment.
I decided I wasn't smart enough to figure it out, not right now, anyway. But is there a song in it? That was the question. Never mind was there any truth in it; was there a song?
No idea. I sat on the wall and I sang silent songs to myself.
A car came along the road, lights bright in the gloaming. It stopped outside the house. Faces looked towards me. Somebody got out on the far side. I heard people talking, in the car. The person on the far side was talking to the driver and somebody else inside. I heard a young, female voice say, 'Wait a minute, then.'
A young girl walked round the car. Slim, dark, short haired; schoolbag, uniform. She walked right up to me, lifted her face to mine (I'd slid off the wall). 'Excuse me, are you Mr Weir?'
'Ah... I... yes.' Surprise. How did she know? It took a second or two for me to realise this must be Dawn. 'Are you...'
'Dawn. Pleased to meet you.' She put out her hand. I shook it; it felt tiny and fragile and warm. Dawn; her grandmother had described her as 'bright'. I smiled, remembering. She turned back to the car. 'It is; it's a friend of my mum's.'
'Right you are, Dawn. See you tomorrow.'
