And the Land Lay Still (47 page)

Glasgow was interesting in other ways. A year after gaining power, and having made a big noise about not using public money to support industrial lame ducks, Heath’s government nationalised Rolls-Royce to stop it going under. When it refused a subsidy to Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, effectively sanctioning the consortium’s
demise, thousands of the workers responded by occupying the UCS yards. The unions organised it – not a strike but a disciplined, determined work-in (‘No hooliganism, no vandalism, no bevvying’) – and it caught the imagination of people across the world. The two most prominent shop stewards, Jimmy Airlie and Jimmy Reid, were Communists but that didn’t stop support flooding in from church leaders, rock stars and other celebrities, the Labour Party, the SNP, the Liberals – even some Tories. Workers’ control in action. Months went by and it became clear that the government couldn’t indefinitely bear the political damage the dispute was causing. After eight months Heath caved in, agreeing to inject a huge amount of cash into UCS.

There was a girl Peter used to talk to around that time. She’d been drawn to Glasgow by the work-in and the heady political fumes the city was giving off. A poor wee rich girl called Lucy, eighteen or nineteen. There were a few of them about, unhappy children who’d rejected privilege and thrown in their lot with the proletariat. She was trying out different ideologies like hats. She wore hats too, a Che-style beret mostly. Peter saw her at some of the same meetings he attended. At first she was with a guy, then she was on her own. He talked to her over cups of tea, or later in bars. Despite his best efforts she wouldn’t give anything away about her background, and although he could have found out he didn’t. She was edgy and surly and he liked that. Bonnie too, dark-haired and with cool eyes and a sulky mouth. After a few encounters, just when he thought she might be interested in him, she stopped appearing. It was odd: he hardly knew her, but he missed her.

In the autumn of 1973 Lord Kilbrandon’s Royal Commission on the Constitution finally published its findings.
A fudge
was how Croick, on another of his visits, assessed it. In the circumstances, he said, it’s better than we could have hoped for. That phrase
in the circumstances
, that presumptive
we
, Peter was beginning to find them somewhat irksome. The main report called for a major transfer of power to Edinburgh: a Scottish Prime Minister, a Scottish Cabinet, a 100-strong parliament with responsibility for most Scottish domestic issues, elected by proportional
representation (They must be joking, Croick scoffed); in exchange there’d be a reduction of Scottish MPs at Westminster and no Secretary of State. (They
are
joking. What would we do without Willie Ross?) Then there was a minority report: it wanted something toothless, more along the lines proposed by the Tories’ constitutional committee. Finally there was a ‘memorandum of dissent’, which dismissed both of these plans and opted for federalism: Scottish and Welsh assemblies and five English regional ones too.

Croick called his visits
jaunts
. His jauntiness was purposeful and dark, like that of a Wee Free elder slipping out of the service early to kick fuck out of a malingerer smoking in the kirkyard. There was a system for setting up meetings via orders sent to the bookshop marked for Peter’s attention, but Croick didn’t always use it. His preference was to appear without notice at Peter’s door, or come into the shop as a browsing customer and arrange to meet later. Peter presumed this was to keep him on his toes. He wondered how often Croick turned up and didn’t find him. Not often, he reckoned. So they knew his movements. No surprise there.

They were in a bar on Mitchell Street, a haunt of journalists from the
Glasgow Herald
and
Evening Times
. It was early evening.

Makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it? Croick said, referring to Kilbrandon. Kick a ball into the long grass and when somebody finally goes to retrieve it they come back with three. Great if you’re a juggler. Looks like we’ll be sticking with what we’ve got, for the time being, consti
tut
ion-wise. He Americanised the word
constitution
disdainfully, making Peter think of Bob Dylan.

What does Canterbury think of it? Peter asked. He had a whisky and a beer in front of him. Croick was on gin and tonic. The room was full of noise and smoke. You felt you could say anything and nobody else would hear it.

He hates it, Croick said. It’s tinkering with his country. More than tinkering, it’ll break it into pieces if it’s implemented. Mind you, he thinks the country’s going to the dogs anyway, without the assistance of Royal Commissions. He paused, maybe to see if Peter had a view on this, then said, So do I, as a matter of fact.

Croick talked about the war in the Middle East, the price of oil
going through the roof, the teetering economy, the threat of strike action by the miners, the ineffectiveness of Ted Heath, the sense of imminent collapse. We all have different ideas about how we stop it happening, he said, leaning in closer. Canterbury would dispense with democracy altogether if he could. Thinks it brings out the worst in people. I know what he means, but as a solution it’s not practical any more. You know what his motto is?

Peter shook his head. He wanted more whisky.

The law is there to be upheld
, Croick said.
And if I have to break it to make sure it is, so help me God, I will
. I’m pulling your leg.

Peter didn’t think he was. He wondered if Canterbury had put him up to it: let’s test the oik. Again, he felt he was watching a double act, only this time one half was offstage.

He said, And what’s your motto?

Mine? Well now. Croick stared into the drift of smoke above his head. The old grey smile appeared on his face.
A law unto himself
, he said. However, this isn’t about me. We were talking about the failings of the democratic system. But the problem isn’t democracy, it’s how you manage it.

You said that before, Peter said. That’s what you do.

Exactly, Croick said. Fundamentally, it’s a management problem. Same again?

Nine days later democracy brought out the worst in people again, when the SNP candidate, Margo MacDonald, stormed to victory in a by-election in Govan.

Croick said, See what I mean? Still plenty of work left for you and me.

It must have been around then that Peter first landed up at Jean Barbour’s. He was spending more and more time in Edinburgh, and thinking he might try to engineer a flit through to the east. He arrived at her place one night having got in tow with a handful of members of something called the Clan Alba Society. The name had echoes of Clann Albainn, a secret organisation MacDiarmid had supposedly been involved with in the 1930s, and Peter had thought it worth checking out. The Clan Alba Society was indeed a front, but not for insurgency: it was a group of whisky
enthusiasts who’d cobbled together a constitution, and nominated a secretary and a treasurer in order to claim funds from the Student Association, which they then spent on expensive malts. Too bloody expensive for Peter’s taste or pocket. Still, they had their uses, such as gaining him access to Jean Barbour’s flat. For a year or so he came and went, watching and listening. He wore a fawn duffelcoat, a kind of homage to those students on the bus who’d sung about Sky-High Joe, all those years ago. There were other private residences into which he got himself admitted, but hers was the one he liked best. There was a kind of comfort in being there. He used to tell himself he was still working when he was at Jean’s, the way Croick claimed he worked in his sleep, but deep down Peter knew it wasn’t true. He didn’t gather Intelligence there, he didn’t learn anything that wasn’t already obvious. Aye, all right, leave aside the dram-tasters of Clan Alba, some genuinely dodgy customers appeared from time to time: boys with tenuous links to the Workers’ Party of Scotland or Boothby’s Army of the Provisional Government, plus a few freelance fantasists. Maybe he was one himself. But the main thing about the gatherings in the Barbour flat was their sociability. He enjoyed being there. He liked the kind of people that turned up, the Catrionas and Helens of young Scotland, even if they didn’t much like him. Duffelcoat Dick they called him, behind his back. Once somebody who didn’t know it was a nickname called him Dick to his face and barely stifled giggles followed. He didn’t care, he didn’t blame them for not liking him, he still liked them. He liked the songs. He liked the stories, the long rambling ones told by Jean, the one-liners and jokes that flew around the room all the time. He would sit there with a glass of somebody else’s wine or a filched bottle of beer and think how normal it all was, and then a pang of jealousy would come as he saw that once again he was in a state of limbo, inside and yet still an outsider. He was part of it and yet alienated. Was it because of who he was or because of what he was? What was he? A nobody, no wife, no kids, no friends, nothing. The Highland girls were lovely, but they weren’t interested in him. He thought of his mother, whom he never saw, and the way she’d believed he was bound for glory. He thought of his father,
ye shouldna joke aboot these things, son
, dead. He thought of Canterbury and Croick, the
weird non-twins of his other world. He knew nothing about their other lives, their family lives, if they had them. The contents of his mind slid again into that dark, sloshing corner where there were no coincidences, only obscure designs and unfathomable plots, off-off-official secrets like there were off-off-Broadway shows. The deeper you went into the shadows and side streets, the greasier the greasepaint. If it was legitimate to infiltrate illegitimate organisations attempting to undermine the state, was it illegitimate to infiltrate legitimate social gatherings? It couldn’t be. There were, after all, a few individuals he recognised at Jean Barbour’s who crossed and recrossed the line. They were compromised, and so they compromised everybody with whom they came in contact. He himself was compromised. And he realised that, for someone like Croick, maybe Canterbury too, there was no line.
Everything
was legitimate, or illegitimate, these words were meaningless. Nothing was off-limits. They secured the premises, Croick had said. It was who they were. It was what they did.

But Peter himself. He recognised that there was a line. He just didn’t know where it was, or at any given moment which side of it he was on. He thought he was so much more clued-up than these happy folk. But they had good reasons for laughing at him.

And then the Demon Barbour confronted him.

EDGAR
(
as
JEAN BARBOUR
): What is it you’re looking for?

BOND
: A corkscrew.

BARBOUR
: You know what I mean. (
She shuts the kitchen door and stands with her back to it. A wee sharp-faced woman, no longer beautiful but he can see she once was.
) You sneak into my home and sit in the shadows with your lugs waggling like antennae and you think I don’t know who you are? Don’t worry, I’m not going to blow your cover, but what’s so special about us?

(
BOND
tips the last of the bottle into the glass. The bottle is thick and heavy in his hand. A portly chap, the High Commissioner, even when vacant. He can hear her voice, a husky, sexy voice, and his own voice, dull and calculating, and underneath both of them his breathing, which sounds like the breathing of another man, the hand clutching the glass is the hand of another man, the man slipping down on the settee, staring up at the abandoned webs round the light fitting, is another man. The haar
is back. He peers through it, looking for
EDGAR.
He sees a figure in the other chair, dimly shimmering.
)

BOND
: You still here?

EDGAR
: I’m still here.

BOND
: With Jean Barbour there never was any point in pretending.
(To
BARBOUR
)
There’s nothing special about you. Do you think this is the only place I go?

BARBOUR
: I don’t care where else you go or who else you like eavesdropping on, but I’m interested to know what you’re doing
here
.

BOND
: The same as I’m doing everywhere. I’m trying to gauge whether we’ve reached point critical.

BARBOUR
: Meaning what?

BOND
: The point of no return. The point where you can’t stop it even if you want to.

BARBOUR
: And have we?

BOND
: No.

BARBOUR
: And can you?

BOND
: Can I what?

BARBOUR
: Stop it if you want to?

BOND
: No.

BARBOUR
: Do you want to?

BOND
: No.

BARBOUR
: You don’t want to?

BOND
(
louder, so she gets the fucking message
): No. Even if I could I don’t want to.

BARBOUR
: Well, then, I’ll not need to come here any more.

(
And in spite of everything he doesn’t want her to go but she goes anyway and he is incapable of stopping her, he is incapable, she steps over a collapsed pile of newspapers and into the passage and over to the front door and he hears the door open and the swishing sound of it pushing junk mail back and the door closing and she’s gone.
)

BOND
(
looking around for
EDGAR,
panicking a little
): Don’t go. Please don’t you go too.

EDGAR
(
homing back into view
): I’m still here. For the time being.

BOND
: I just … I just like to talk.

EDGAR
: I like to listen. Where were we?

BOND
: 1974. Every time there was a council by-election the SNP
seemed to win it. Their opinion-poll rating was consistently good, especially among young people. They were on a roll and the roll looked unstoppable. Everybody else was getting very nervous. When I think about it now …