Reheated Cabbage (18 page)

She slipped free from them, stood up and shook her head. It was too much. She looked at Victor.— You're a prick, you're right enough there. Git oot ma fuckin face. How many times dae ah huv tae tell ye? It's over! N you, she fumed to Gavin whose eyes had gone even more baleful, — we had a fuckin shag, that's aw. If it wis any mair tae you, tell
me
aboot it, no him, n tell ays whin yir no aw fill ay chemicals. Now fuck off and leave ays alaine, the pair ay yis! She stood up and moved towards the exit of the pub.

— Ah'll gie ye a bell the night . . . Gavin said, hearing his voice crack like a light bulb and the 'night' part become incomprehensible.

— Jist fuck off! she fumed and sneered, and left.

— Well, Gavin said, turning to Victor with a hint of self-satisfaction, — there it is. You're bombed oot fir good, bit ah'm still in thaire. Ah jist see her whin ah'm straight n pit her in the picture.

Victor shook his head. — Ye dinnae ken Sarah but, eh. That's no what ah goat fae it at aw.

They argued for a while, punctuating their points with friendly squeezes on each other's wrists to maintain their communion.

A man entered the pub at this point, a man whom they both recognised. It was the dentist, Mr Ormiston. He bought a half-pint of heavy and sat at a table close to them reading
Scotland on Sunday
. He noticed them out of the corner of his eye. Gavin grinned and Victor raised his pint glass. Ormiston gave a weary smile back. It was the two young bucks. Where was the girl?

— Sorry aboot the Edinburgh, mate, Victor said. — Bet ye wir fuckin well zorba'd at that, eh?

— Pardon? Orminston looked puzzled.

— Didnae mean tae involve ye in aw that nonsense in yir surgery. Sorted her oot but, mate, eh?

— Oh yes. Pretty nasty but routine extractions. Wisdom teeth can be tricky, but it's all in a day's work.

— Victor moved closer to Ormiston. — Some joab yuv goat thaire but, mate, eh? Ah couldnae dae that. Lookin in cunts' mooths aw day. He turned to Gavin. — Widnae be me!

Gavin looked thoughtfully at the dentist. — They tell ays thit ye need as much trainin tae be a dentist as ye dae tae be a doaktir. Is that right, mate?

— Well, as a matter of fact it is, Ormiston began, in the somewhat self-justifying air of a man who regards his profession as crassly misunderstood by the lay person.

— Shite! Victor interrupted.— Youse kin fuck oot ay here, the pair ay yis! A dentist yuv jist goat the mooth tae deal wi, where the likes ay doaktirs, they cunts've goat the whole boady! Yir no tryin tae tell ays that a dentist needs the same amount ay trainin as a doaktir!

— Naw, bit it's no the same thing, Vic. By that fuckin logic, that means that a vet wid need mair trainin thin a doaktir, because they've goat tae learn no jist aboot humans, bit aboot cats n dugs, n rabbits, n cows . . . the physiology ay aw they different animals.

— Ah nivir sais that, Victor insisted, wagging his finger at Gavin.

— Ah'm jist sayin thit it's the same fuckin principles involved here, that's aw ah'm sayin. Tae tend tae a whole creature needs mair trainin than tae tend tae one part ay a creature. That's what yir sayin, right?

— Aye, right, Victor conceded, as Ormiston tried to get back to his paper.

— So by the same logic, tendin tae different creatures'll mean mair trainin than tendin tae jist the one creature, right?

— Uh-uh-uh-uh, Victor halted him. — Doesnae follow. This is human society wir talkin aboot here, right?

— So?

— So it isnae fuckin dug society or cat society –

— Wait the now. What you're sayin is thit in oor society humans are the maist valued species, so the level ay investment in the trainin ay people tae tend tae humans –

— Has goat tae exceed the level ay investment n trainin gied tae people thit tend tae animals. Hus tae be that wey, Gav. Victor turned to Ormiston. — Is that no right but, mate?

— Yes, I suppose it's a point, the dental surgeon said distractedly.

Gavin was thinking about this. There was something that was jarring him. The way people treated animals was out of order. And him too, he hadn't even fed the fuckin cat. Out for two days on one, and he'd forgotten about a promise he'd made to his ma, that he'd go round to hers and feed the cat. She was away up to her sister's at Inverness. She was mad about that cat. She often called it Gavin by mistake, which hurt him more than he let on. He felt a surge of guilt. — Listen, Vic, ah've goat tae nash. You've jist reminded ays, ah said thit ah'd go roond tae muh ma's n feed the cat. The last thing ah promised. He stood up and Victor did too. They had another hug. — Nae hard feelings, eh, mate?

— Naw, man . . . ah jist hope she comes back tae ays, Victor said wearily.

— Well, mate, ye ken ma feelins oan that yin . . . Gavin nodded.

— Aye . . . take care, Gav. We're at hame next Setirday. Aberdeen, eh, the cup.

— Aye. Which effectively means the season's over next week if ye discount the relegation battle.

— It's a tough joab, mate, bit some cunt's goat tae dae it. See ye doon the Four-in-Hand.

— Right.

Gavin turned and left the pub. He walked up the hill at Hanover Street, or Hangover Street, as they called it. The effects of the MDMA were running down in him and a shiver coursed through his body, although it wasn't cold. He pulled a flyer for a club night out of his pocket. Written on it was the name SARAH and a seven-digit phone number. He should just be able to phone that number. It was love. It was. It shouldn't have needed an ideal place and time to be expressed. It should just happen.

There was a phone box. There was an Asian woman in it. He wanted her to finish that call. More than anything. Then he became aware of his heart, thrashing in his chest. He couldn't speak to her like this; he'd fuck it up again. He wanted the woman to stay on the phone forever. Then she put the receiver down on the cradle. Gavin turned away and walked down the road. Now wasn't the time. Now was the time to get to his mother's house and feed Sparky the cat.

For Dave Beer

Sitting in the lush garden, Albert Black's eyes glinted as he sipped his glass of iced tea. The fauna and flora of this tropical zone were alien to him; a coal-and-rouge bird chirped a belligerent warning from its vantage point in a eucalyptus tree, before springing into the air. Black wondered fleetingly about signs, though the notion of the augur was too Romanist, too pagan for his tastes, before returning to the palms that sambaed in the cool breeze. This led his line of vision out onto the electric blue of Biscayne Bay, and beyond to the skyscrapers of downtown Miami, glowing brashly in the morning sun. He found these lofty edifices distasteful. America seemed, in spite of the fervour of its daytime television evangelists, and the obligatory piety of its politicians, to be the most godless place he had visited. When he looked over at the emerging new financial district, he dimly recalled the magnesium gleam of the first Apollo spaceship as it launched from close to here, en route to the moon; all the time moving further from heaven.

Lifting the glass of tea, Black caught sight of his reflection. Despite his advanced years, his face had retained its bony, angular structure and pasty complexion. Close-cut grey stubble grew on each side of his head, the dome of which glistened leathery pink. He regarded his trademark thick, black spectacles, sitting on a hawklike beak of a nose. They covered small, dark eyes that still sparkled combatively, despite the pathos in them that seemed to invite sympathy. But he was the only person around to offer this, and that was certainly not in his nature. He crushed the weakness from his face with a tightening of his mouth, setting the glass down on the white wrought-iron garden table.

There was the problem of getting William and Christine ready for
the church. Every Sunday: always the same problem; the footdragging,
the procrastination. Nobody, even Marion, seemed to really
grasp the issue of punctuality, and how we needed to set a good
example. Rudeness to God, through late arrival at His house, could
not be accepted. Lateness in general was a curse, the way in which
time could be stolen, frittered away . . .

He felt the surge of a familiar malign force rising from within, and fought it down, champing on nothing but his teeth: that terrible burn inside. It was always strongest when he reluctantly woke into a new day and was sabotaged by that cruel jolt of anticipation, that hope that she'd somehow be back.

But Marion was gone.

Forty-one years of marriage over and the best part of him destroyed. He'd watched powerlessly as the cancer thinned her down and hollowed her out, eating her from the inside. Albert Black looked out over the bay. He could have been cast adrift, floundering aimlessly in its waters, as he now was in the thick, warm air around him. Nothing was left; even his basic principles and his faith wavered uncertainly.

Why Marion? Why? Why, Holy Father?

But was it right to expect a just God? Was to do so not merely
displaying the vanity of those who would seek to elevate themselves
in the grand scheme of things? What a conceit to expect individual
justice, when we were blessed by being part of something larger and
immortal!

Or were we?

Yes! Forgive me my doubts, oh Father!

The bird had returned, and it cast a sharp, keen eye over Black, before trilling with increased venom.

— Yes, my friend, I hear you.

Yes. We are so slow to consider justice to members of other species
on this Earth, yet we are so piteous when our mortality is tampered
with by powers greater than us.

The bird seemed satisfied by this response and flew away.

But Marion . . . a world full of sinners, and He took
you
from me!

No matter how much Old Testament outrage Albert Black tried to summon up in his contempt of what he saw as the forlorn weakness of his species, Marion's face would always appear in his mind's eye. Even in her absence, her grace had the power to subdue his rage. But he'd been forced to recognise a painful, if bitter-sweet, lesson since her death: it was always
her
, not God. He saw that now. It was her love, not his own faith, which had cleansed and saved him. Redeemed him. Made sense of his life.

He always envisioned her as youthful; just as he had known her when they first met at the church back in Lewis, on that cold and squally October Sunday afternoon. And now, following her departure, he'd felt the desertion of another lifelong companion. No matter what chapters and verses of the good book he recited, or which psalms played in his head, however he tried to deflect his rage onto his fellow men, especially the non-believers, doubters, Judases and false prophets, Albert Black had to concede to himself that he was angry at the Creator for Marion's absence.

Estranged from his daughter, Christine, who lived in Australia, Black had found that coming to Florida and the remnants of his family had offered him far less solace than he could have imagined. His son, William, was an accountant – a traditional and noble profession for a Scots Protestant. But he worked in the film business. Black had always associated that tawdry enterprise with California, but William had explained that some major studios now had operations out in Florida in order to take advantage of the tax incentives and the weather. However, it was clear to him that his son had taken on some of the decadent trappings of that vile industry.

You only had to consider this house and its sickening extravagance. The Caribbean-style, theatrically uplit dwelling on its waterfront setting, the impact-glass windows running from the hardwood and tiled floors to the nine-foot ceilings, those five bedchambers with en suite facilities and walk-in closets, which were rooms themselves in their spacious generosity. The kitchen, with its stone countertops and designer accessories: refrigerator/freezer, stainless-steel appliances, washer-dryer. (Italian, William had called it. Albert had stated that he was unaware a scullery possessed a nationality.) Five luxurious bathrooms, all with marble countertops, baths and showers, toilets and bidets. The largest one, in the master bedroom that William shared with his wife, Darcy, containing a large Whirlpool bath, raised on a stage, and obviously meant for the indulgence of more than one person; Romanist in its decadence. A fitness room with state-of-the-art exercise equipment, an office and library, and a wine vault with dedicated storage spaces. Outside, a rear multilevel landscaped garden with luxurious water features and direct bay access with moorings that berthed a substantial boat, and a four-car garage the size of the old family home back in Edinburgh. When William conversed on the phone to his business associates and friends, it seemed to his father as if he was speaking another language.

William's wife, Darcy (Black had to constantly fight to cast aside images of her and his son cavorting nakedly in that bath), had been such a sweet wee lassie, all he could have wanted in a daughter-in-law. He recalled when the shy and demure and, above all, God-fearing young American student was presented to them by their son, at the old house in Merchiston, some twenty years ago. An exchange student, Darcy was supposedly a committed Christian. But how many times, he considered, had he seen her since they'd first met? Perhaps on half a dozen occasions. Then, when she and William had graduated, it was understood that they would marry and go to live in America.

Now Darcy seemed different: brisk, sly, assertive and worldly. He heard her cackling with her friends who came over and drank alcohol during the day. Their shrill laughter stinging his ears, as they recounted, in a manner that nauseated him, their purchases of rubbish, which seemed to be procured purely for the sake of ownership rather than utility.

Albert Black did not regard it as his place to pass comment on his discomfort. After all, on picking him up at the airport, William had immediately informed him that they didn't attend church any more. His son had obviously been thinking about this declaration; it had the stilted air of rehearsal. Of course, it was sugar-coated: he'd claimed that the Church of Scotland in Miami wasn't suitable, and the American Protestant evangelical churches were littered with egotists and false prophets. But Albert Black had looked into his son's watery-grey eyes and saw treachery.

Black had no relationship with his teenage grandson, Billy. He'd made the effort in the lad's boyhood, even trying to understand baseball, but how could you take seriously a nation that had rounders as its national sport? He'd taken him to the football over in Scotland, which he'd liked. But Billy was grown up now. That girl who came around – from Mexico or somewhere like that. They had told him but he couldn't recall. What he did register were her judging eyes, and that wily little smile stuck on her lips. Pretty, yes; but in a very tarty sort of way. A girl like that was always trouble to a young man. And that music they played! It was surely a travesty referring to that artless, monotonous racket as music. Continually banging out from his room in the basement. Billy seemed to have sole use of that huge area, which ran the length of the house. Living like a mole when there were perfectly good empty bedrooms to choose from. William and Darcy seeming not to bother, not even appearing to hear the continual cacophonous din. But then they were out most of the time. He recalled them mumbling some nonsense about Billy's need for privacy when they took him on the inaugural tour of their home.

So after two weeks in the Sunshine State, human contact was decidedly lacking. Now Albert Black's routine consisted of sitting all day in the shade at the bottom of the garden overlooking the bay, reading his Bible, waiting for his family to come home. Darcy would cook a meal, and they would say grace at the table, which he sensed was contrived and purely for his benefit. Then he'd go for a short evening walk prior to sitting in front of the monstrous plasma television screen before retiring to bed in withering exhaustion, his head blasted by one thousand channels of advertisements with slivers of television broadcast sandwiched in between.

Turning in.

His catchphrase: I think I'll turn in.

I've been turning in all my life.

He looked up to see a large white cruise ship pulling into the bay. It resembled a block in the housing scheme where he'd taught. From the inside, he supposed that the cabins would be luxurious enough. Perhaps the key difference to the scheme block, though, was in its mobility. It had probably come from the Caribbean. Albert Black found it hard to think of such places; they never seemed vivid in his imagination. It was Canada that had always held exotic sway. He'd thought of emigrating there, long ago, when he and Marion were young. But he felt duty-bound to work in his own country, and he joined the Scots Guards, serving abroad for three years, before returning to Scotland's capital city and taking a degree in divinity and philosophy at Edinburgh University, opting then to go into education via Moray House Teacher Training College.

He'd entered the education system with a Knoxian zeal, believing that it was important for a Scottish Protestant to continue the great democratic tradition of providing the best education for the poorest children. And he'd come to the then new sixties-built comprehensive school in the housing scheme, with high hopes of turning out missionaries, ministers, engineers, scientists, doctors and educators like himself; making it a bastion of a new Scottish Enlightenment. But, he reflected under the relentless sun that filtered through the shivering palm trees, his aspirations were lunatic. Typists and labourers; they produced them by the barrel-load. Builders, shop assistants and, latterly, once even that work had dried up, small-time gangsters and drug dealers. These days the school couldn't even unearth a decent footballer. It had never boasted a Smith, Stanton, Souness or Strachan, though one or two had made a living from the game. But no longer.

Of course, Albert Black knew the material he was working with – poverty, social disadvantage, broken homes and low expectation – but he strove to provide a disciplinary and ethical framework within the school gates, which might compensate for the lawless immorality in the scheme and beyond. And he'd been mocked for this. Not only turned into a figure of fun by his pupils, but also by other members of staff and by the Marxists on the city's education committee. Even his colleagues in the Association of Christian Teachers, embarrassed by his zeal, had betrayed him, failing to support his protests against the compulsory early retirement visited upon him.

We must have social education and religious knowledge!