Tombstoning Read online

  ‘That’s not the problem,’ said David, enjoying the touch of her skin on his. ‘I mean, initially that was my problem with the place, I suppose. The fact that I associated Arbroath with Colin’s death. But it’s become more ingrained than that. Don’t you see, even the physical act of returning seems totally alien to me. I’m not sitting around here pining for Colin. I long ago reached the conclusion that this sort of shite just happens every day and people have to get on with it. I used to remember the anniversary of the accident every year, but I haven’t for the last five years at least. That’s not the point. The point is a plain and simple one, I haven’t kept in touch with the people or the place, and I don’t see any point in doing it now.’

  ‘OK then, what about all our other mates from the time? What about Gary and Neil, for example? The three of you and Colin were pretty close back then. Wouldn’t you like to know what they’ve been up to for the last decade and a half?’

  ‘That’s just the thing – I haven’t bothered until now, so why start?’

  ‘But if you never bother about what’s gone before, how can you know who you are? Everything that happens to us over the years makes us into what we are today. Don’t you think?’

  David didn’t really want to tell her that he didn’t think that, that people reinvented themselves successfully every day all around the world. He was enjoying holding her hand too much. He looked her in the eye and he could see real compassion in there. She seemed to care about him, although why she should, since they hadn’t spoken a word in years before yesterday, was a bit beyond him. It felt good, though, having someone looking out for him. He hadn’t had that feeling for a long while.

  ‘Look, we can go together,’ said Nicola, relaxing a little and letting go of his hand. David didn’t want the contact to stop, but he didn’t know how to keep it going so he just grabbed his pint and started drinking while she talked. ‘We can be the sarky, cool pair at the back slagging everyone else off for being boring bastards, how about that? We can get stupidly drunk and carry on like a pair of idiots, and if we offend everyone then fuck it, we don’t have to ever see any of them ever again. Christ, I could do with a serious piss-up, I haven’t been hammered in a long, long time. These things happen when you’re a responsible parent and you’ve got kiddies’ parties and school uniforms and packed lunches and trips to see Shrek followed by your tea at Pizza Hut to worry about. But up in Arbroath next weekend I’ll have my folks looking after Amy. So go on, how about it?’

  David had been half-listening, thinking about what she’d said earlier about ignoring your past. He was over Colin’s death years ago, but the vacuum left in his life was still there, the space where a background should’ve been. Part of him thanked his parents for moving away, giving him an excuse to never go back, but part of him also blamed them for not giving him the option, ever, of returning to the place where he’d grown up, played football, ridden his bike, got drunk in the park and briefly, all too briefly, snogged Nicola Cruickshank outside Boots one Hogmanay.

  ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Why the hell not, eh?’

  He wasn’t at all sure why he was saying this, but his half-drunk instinct had brought him this far – to a smoky pub on a summer day across a table from a beautiful woman with her head screwed on tight – so he could trust it a little further. He finished his pint and got up.

  ‘Same again?’

  Nicola nodded. He got them in and came back to the table. Nicola was grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing. Just looking forward to going to this bloody thing now.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Really?’ She sounded dubious. David laughed.

  ‘No, not really. But if you promise to hold my hand if it gets too scary, I’m sure I’ll manage.’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’ She raised her glass and they clinked them together again. ‘To the Keptie High School class of ’88 reunion!’

  ‘Jesus. There’s still time to change my mind, if you keep up that enthusiastic, cheerleading shit.’

  ‘Don’t knock it, mister. I’d look great in a ra-ra skirt and pom-poms, even now.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’

  They both took a drink, David thinking about Nicola in a cheerleader outfit, Nicola smiling at him over her pint, fully aware of that fact.

  After their third pint it was time for Nicola to pick up Amy from her mate’s party. They were getting on so well David badly wanted to stay out with her but he realized that couldn’t happen and offered to walk Nicola up the road.

  ‘Where’s the party?’ he said.

  ‘Livingstone Place, just across the Meadows. It’s one street along from our own flat, in Gladstone Terrace.’

  ‘Really? I’m just down the road in Rankeillor Street.’

  ‘Small world.’

  ‘How long did you say you’ve been in Edinburgh?’

  ‘Four years.’

  ‘And we’ve never seen each other.’

  ‘Hardly that surprising unless you spend your time loitering outside Sciennes Primary School, or my work. I scarcely get anywhere else these days.’

  They were walking through the Meadows, the large park spread across the area south of the university. The sun was still blazing away in the early evening, and the grass was covered with semi-clad students, tourists and festival-goers, all soaking up rare and valuable rays. Groups of lads kicked footballs about and frisbees got flung far and wide. They walked past some hippies practising firestick juggling, and accepted flyers from some androgynous oriental types for the Ladyboys of Bangkok spectacular. The festival was getting properly going, thought David as he took another handful of flyers from some posh twat for a student revue show in a cave somewhere. He put all the flyers in the next bin. He really hated the fucking festival. They reached the bottom of Livingstone Place and stood kind of awkwardly loitering, like they were at the end of a first date.

  ‘I’m just going to pick up Amy then head home, do you want to meet her?’ said Nicola, fully expecting David to say no. Why would he want to meet her daughter, just because they’d spent a few hours together after fifteen years of silence?

  ‘Yeah, why not?’ he said.

  ‘Really? That’s cool. I could do with the back-up, to be honest. Lots of Amy’s pals seem to have really posh parents, and they all look down on me, single mum and all that. Stuck-up twats. Mind you, if I turn up stinking of booze with a strange man, I don’t suppose that’s gonna endear me to the members of the PTA, now, is it?’

  Nicola rang the bell of the main-door flat and a dumpy woman in glasses and a turtleneck answered. She reminded David of that girl from Scooby Doo, not the sexy one, but the one who was always losing her glasses, and who always worked it out in the end.

  ‘Cassandra,’ said Nicola, turning on the charm, ‘how’s everything going?’

  ‘Oh, mayhem, as you might expect. Come on in and watch your step, Melissa’s junk is everywhere.’

  They followed her down the hall, Nicola turning to whisper to David. ‘Ever been in a room full of eight-year-old girls before?’

  ‘Not that I remember, which means either no or I was very drunk.’

  She made a face as they entered the living room. David looked around but the carnage didn’t seem that bad. There was a blur of fast-moving pink bodies scooting around the large bay-windowed room, and a noise a bit like a gannet colony in mating season, but he’d been at parties dafter than this.

  David hung about in the background as Nicola extricated Amy from proceedings. It seemed quite easy, Amy apparently not at all bothered to be leaving. David spotted which one was Amy straight away. She had inherited her mother’s looks, her smile not quite so wide but her eyes bigger and deeper brown, and goddamn it, she had the family nose, that wee squint kink that he liked so much in Nicola. She stood out from the crowd by virtue of the fact she was the only one not in regulation pink; instead she sported a cornflowe
r blue summer dress with yellow shoes and matching Alice band and bangles. She was also the only one not running around in that daft stomping gait that children have; instead she seemed light on her feet.

  ‘Amy meet David; David meet Amy,’ said Nicola, gently touching Amy’s back as she guided her towards the door.

  ‘Hello, Amy,’ said David, trying to sound as normal as possible. Had he ever spoken to an eight-year-old girl before? Not since he was eight himself, probably.

  ‘Have you been drinking with Mum?’ said Amy, using her big eyes on David.

  ‘Yes, I have,’ said David with a laugh.

  ‘You smell of beer, Mum,’ said Amy.

  ‘That’s what happens when you go out with strange men, dear. I hope you don’t find that out for yourself for a very long time.’

  Amy rolled her eyes and looked at David as if to say, ‘See what I have to put up with’. She turned and waved goodbye to the pink flurry of the room, which briefly stopped to wave and shout back, then she headed out the door. Nicola looked at David, smiled and shook her head slightly. Amy, at the front door now, shouted ‘Come on!’, and David and Nicola made their way down the hall and out the door sniggering like a pair of kids themselves.

  At the end of the next street David and Nicola did that mooning-around thing again, as if on a date, this time with Amy hanging around looking bored next to them.

  ‘Can we go, Mum? I want to see X Factor,’ said Amy, swinging off her mum’s arm.

  ‘Hold your horses.’ Nicola turned to David. ‘So, I guess I’ll see you next Saturday, then. Unless you bottle it, in which case I’ll never speak to you again.’

  ‘What, not for another fifteen years?’ He had said it as a joke, but the thought of it sent a tiny shiver down his spine.

  ‘Exactly. That’ll teach you.’

  ‘Maybe I could call you through the week?’ He held her gaze for longer than was necessary, and she held it right back.

  ‘Yeah, you could do that.’

  They looked at each other for a few more seconds smiling, then David leaned in and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.

  ‘OK, I’ll see you.’ He looked down at Amy, who was scuffing her yellow shoes on the edge of the kerb. ‘Nice meeting you, Amy.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Amy replied, noncommittally.

  With that David reluctantly turned and walked away towards the edge of the Meadows and his own flat beyond.

  ‘How was the party, then, madam?’ Nicola asked, taking Amy’s hand and turning up Gladstone Terrace towards home.

  ‘All right, I suppose,’ said Amy. ‘But Melissa thinks she’s better than everyone else, and her mum made us play stupid games for little kids.’

  ‘Right,’ said Nicola. ‘Let’s get a pizza in and you can tell me all about it.’ She waited a moment then said, ‘What did you think of David?’

  Amy thought for a moment.

  ‘Dunno,’ she said. ‘All right.’ She thought for another few seconds. ‘He had cool trainers.’

  ‘Right,’ said Nicola. ‘Cool trainers.’

  A few hundred yards away David let himself into his flat and opened a beer from the fridge. He thought about Nicola and he thought about Arbroath. He would go there to spend more time with her, it was as simple as that. He wished he was with her right now, but he knew enough not to rush into anything. It was Saturday night, but he didn’t feel like going out. He finished his beer and opened another, took the phone off the hook and sat thinking about Nicola some more.

  3

  Return to Arbroath

  On Sunday morning David changed his mind about going, then changed it back. He pottered around the house thinking about Nicola and Amy, then Colin and the past, doing nothing and deliberately letting his mind churn over what had happened and what might happen. Why was he attracted to Nicola now? She was beautiful, and she seemed to be interested in him – wasn’t that one of the main criteria for being attracted to someone, that they were attracted to you as well? Of course there was the past, the whole idea that by hooking up with Nicola again he might be reclaiming his past and all that psychobabble bullshit, but he didn’t really believe that. It was a here and now question – he was here and now and so was she, and they got on, so why not try and get together? He kept seeing her face, over and over again, looking over her shoulder in the museum, smiling at him in Sandy’s, looking with unfathomable love at her daughter. Damn, it was a nice face.

  But then this reunion was another story. Couldn’t he try and hook up with Nicola without this dreaded trudge into the murky swamp of the past? Probably, but then he had said he would go, for whatever reasons, and she seemed pretty set on the idea, so what the hell. Then again, like he’d explained to her, he had no connection emotionally or physically with Arbroath now, with this place of his childhood. So why bother?

  He talked himself in and out of going for the next two days, then received a flirty email from her, taking the piss out of him gently (she had rightly assumed that he was swithering) and suggesting he call her if he was having any doubts. He phoned her that night.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Oh, hi, Amy? This is Dave, your, em, mum’s friend. Is she around?’ He really was going to have to get used to communicating with an eight-year-old girl if this was going to go anywhere. He heard her calling for Nicola playfully, then there was a long wait. He was dreaming when she finally picked up.

  ‘David?’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘You got my email then.’

  ‘Yeah. You were right, I was beginning to reconsider the whole Arbroath thing this weekend.’

  Her voice was full of laughter down the line.

  ‘Ha! I knew it. That’s what happens when you spend time away from my wily, womanly charms. So what can I say to persuade you? What’s the equivalent of a Chinese burn down the phone? Why the second thoughts?’

  David didn’t know why. The same stuff as before, really, everything he’d said in the pub to her. He told her so, but she was having none of it.

  ‘That’s all just crap up here, and I am now tapping the side of my head with my finger like a woodpecker, since you can’t see me,’ said Nicola. ‘Psychological mumbo-jumbo claptrap of the highest order. If you really seriously don’t want to go then fine, I don’t suppose there’s anything I can really do to persuade you, but I bet you anything once you’re there you’ll have a good time.’

  ‘It’s the logistics of it as well, Nicola,’ said David. ‘I mean, where the hell would I even stay? Everyone else can probably stay with their folks, not me.’

  ‘That’s no excuse. If it wasn’t so crowded at my folks’ you could’ve stayed there. Tell you what, why don’t you leave it to me – I’ll book you a B&B or something, take the hassle out of the whole thing.’

  ‘I can do that myself, it’s just…’

  ‘I won’t hear another word. That’s decided. I’ll book you something for Friday and Saturday nights. I’ll email you the details once it’s done. Any other objections? Do you want me to sort out travel and meals while I’m at it? Help pick out your wardrobe for the weekend?’

  David laughed despite himself. ‘Really, I can’t let you go to the bother of…’

  ‘I told you, it’s decided. Next topic of conversation?’

  Nicola came off the phone wondering why she had just railroaded him into going. Why did she care so much if David was there? She couldn’t really understand his reticence about going, to her it was just a weekend away from the usual humdrum stuff of life, a chance to see what the hell the people from her past had been up to, and an excuse to catch up with her family. But now, she supposed, it was something else as well. Since meeting David at the weekend she had been thinking about him a lot. He still seemed young and naive. He’d never had to grow up in the way that she had with Amy. Somehow this reunion was part of it all, she wanted him to see that the past wasn’t a scary place, it was just the past, and she wanted him to grow up a little, so that he could maybe, just maybe, fit a little better int
o her life. But she was also drawn to that naivety, that thing that she didn’t have any more, the idea of living only in the present. Because you couldn’t do that, not with a daughter and a future to think of. Was she jealous of him in a way? Probably, she thought. But a good kind of jealous, she told herself. Whatever the hell that meant.

  David got an email the next day at lunchtime with B&B details. Fairport House, 66 Nolt Loan Road, owned by a Mrs Swankie, charging £20 a night. It was a few doors down from the house he’d grown up in. Nicola had obviously booked this place as a joke, or a reminder or something. It was a street of century-old semis opposite the Keptie Pond, a place where he’d had countless childhood adventures, falling through ice, chasing swans, upturning boats, discovering glue-sniffers, losing footballs, falling off his bike, fighting other kids and all the rest. If anywhere was going to open the floodgates of memories it was this street. Great, thought David, but part of him was also pleased that Nicola had gone to the trouble of sorting him out with somewhere, surely that meant something. Or was he totally getting ahead of himself? Yes, he thought, he absolutely was, but he couldn’t help himself and he found that as the days went on he was trying less and less to stop himself doing so.

  She phoned him on Thursday night.

  ‘All set for tomorrow, then?’

  ‘What makes you think I’m going?’

  ‘Well you haven’t told me otherwise, and you’d bloody better be, because otherwise I’m due the money on that bloody B&B.’

  ‘Yeah, OK, I’m going. Thanks for sorting that out, by the way.’

  ‘Not a problem. Can’t vouch for the place, could be a doily-filled, lacy shitehole, but you’d be surprised how little tourist accommodation there is in Arbroath. Or maybe you wouldn’t, since you grew up there and you know what it’s like.’

  ‘Nolt Loan Road as well.’

  ‘Yes, I thought that was a nice touch. Trip down memory lane, etc. All very obvious, but there you go. If you will leave your arrangements in my hands, that’s what you get.’