Tombstoning Read online

  ‘How did you know I was staying here?’

  ‘I ran into Sonia the other day and she mentioned it.’ Sonia? Who the hell was she? And how did she know who, and where, he was? ‘Listen,’ he still sounded nervous and David imagined him twisting the phone cord around a fidgeting finger. ‘Do you fancy maybe going out for a pint tonight? Catch up on old times and all that? Just thought it would be an idea before the reunion proper tomorrow.’

  He had to think quick. He was waiting for Nicola to phone, and the prospect of hooking up with her tonight, just the two of them, blew everything else out the water.

  ‘I was thinking I might just take it easy tonight, Gary, to be honest. You know, chill out. Keep the powder dry for tomorrow night and all that. You understand.’

  ‘Sure. It was just an idea. Well, listen, if you’re not busy tomorrow during the day, how about we go to the football? We’re playing Montrose at home. If you fancy it?’

  Gary sounded so pathetic on the phone David felt sorry for him, then guilty for feeling sorry. He thought, well I don’t even know this guy from fucking Adam anymore, I haven’t spoken to him in fifteen years. But then he was bouncing him tonight in favour of a woman who, a week ago, he hadn’t spoken to in just as long. Why the hell not go to the footy the next day? If nothing else, he could do with a few afternoon pints, might as well get a head start if this reunion was going to be at all bearable.

  ‘Sure, Gary, why not?’ He could hear the boyish relief down the phone, and something else, a more desperate sensation he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

  ‘Great,’ said Gary. ‘Want to meet in Tutties? Say about one o’clock?’

  ‘Cool. I’ll see you there.’

  ‘See you there.’

  David put the phone down. Another voice from the past, he thought, but then why be surprised by that? He was, after all, in the town he grew up in for a stupid school reunion.

  The phone rang as he was still standing there, and he picked it up instinctively.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is that you, David?’

  Nicola.

  ‘Hi there, gorgeous. What’s wrong with trying my mobile?’

  ‘Tried it. Straight on to answer machine.’

  ‘Maybe I’m not getting a reception here.’

  ‘Maybe. It’s a terrible backwater, after all.’

  ‘Sure is.’

  ‘You made it then, didn’t bottle out?’

  ‘You thought I’d bottle out?’

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘It did cross my mind.’

  ‘So now you’re here, how is it?’

  ‘Strange. Just had Gary Spink on the phone.’

  ‘Really? Saying what?’

  ‘I’m meeting him for the footy tomorrow.’

  ‘So you’re still free tonight? How about we go out and get drunk, as previously discussed.’

  ‘Funny, I was thinking exactly the same thing. When and where did you have in mind?’

  ‘Well, I thought we could pay the Lochlands an overdue visit, but before that, how about you take me for a drive?’

  ‘A drive?’ David could sense something funny. ‘What sort of drive?’

  ‘You know, a drive. In your car,’ said Nicola. ‘Brrrm, brrrm. I’m doing that steering wheel thing with my hands. Internationally accepted gesture for driving.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘You’re a right suspicious sod, aren’t you? Just around. Around and about. Maybe we’ll do handbrake turns in the Viewfield Hotel car park, maybe we’ll drive down to the harbour and I’ll push you in.’

  ‘Or maybe we’ll drive out to the cliffs where Colin fell?’

  There was a slight beat of a pause.

  ‘Maybe that’ll happen,’ said Nicola, and David heard a slyness in her voice that was irresistible. ‘Anything’s possible.’

  He didn’t hesitate.

  ‘Will I come pick you up?’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask,’ said Nicola, the slyness replaced by a bubbly chirrup, no less irresistible. ‘You remember the house? 10 St Vigeans Road. I’ll see you in, what, ten minutes?’

  ‘Make it five,’ said David.

  His head spun slightly as he put down the phone, but he took the stairs two at a time back up to his room to get the car keys, and was out the front door in twenty seconds flat.

  Such a beautiful setting on such a peaceful evening, it was hard to accept a life being snuffed out in this place. The sandstone of the cliffs seemed to glow in the late evening sunlight, as if the rock was resonating with the sun’s wavelengths, giving off its own light and heat in response. The North Sea seemed a different creature to the notorious icy beast that had claimed so many lives through the years, more like a gently purring cat at the heels of the land, ingratiating itself with little friendly lapping sounds. Nicola and David gazed out at the enormity of the sea, hypnotized by the white noise shush of the green-brown water.

  ‘Next stop Norway,’ said Nicola. David didn’t seem to hear, or was lost in his thoughts. Eventually he emerged from the trance he was in.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s something my dad always says looking out to sea. “Next stop Norway”, as if it was swimmable or something. As if you could just wander in like Reggie Perrin, and by teatime you’d be ensconced in a cottage on the banks of a fjord, feasting on a smorgasbord with some Nordic family decked out in big woolly jumpers. I really like that idea, making the massive, faceless sea seem small and personal.’

  Nicola wondered why she’d brought David here – to the cliffs, to Arbroath at all. He’d looked a little shocked as they’d driven around town for a while, as if every corner they turned was unveiling new, horrific memories for him. Of course she knew that those memories weren’t horrific, he wasn’t a traumatized man for Christ’s sake, it’s just that the memories hadn’t been visited in a long, long time, without the visceral presence of the actual places to unearth them. For her the town was an organic entity, changing and developing, for better or worse, but for him it was maybe a place trapped in amber, buried in time, locked instantaneously in a moment, like Pompeii. It was a ridiculous way to look at a town, she thought, and he needed to stop looking at Arbroath, and his past, that way.

  She turned her back on the sea and looked again at the small memorial stone. ‘In memory of Colin Anderson, who died here July 31st, 1988.’ It was a simple enough inscription on a three-foot, rough-hewn stone, the grey granite grain of it somehow out of place amongst all this sandstone. The rock under their feet seemed alive with possibilities, while the memorial stone reminded Nicola only of pallid death. Maybe it had been a mistake to come here, she thought. What was to be gained? She looked out over the fields inland from the cliffs, the low potato plants still green in the ground, a couple of months yet before they could be picked. The rows of fields seemed to go on for miles, somehow further than the sea she had been looking at, because of the parallel lines drawing her eye to infinity.

  ‘Whose are the flowers, do you think?’ David was looking at the stone. A bunch of wilted carnations, dirty white and jaundiced yellow, lay at the foot of the stone, kept in place by a rock.

  ‘Probably his mum and dad’s,’ said Nicola. ‘Can’t imagine anyone else coming up here to place flowers after all this time. Although you’d think they would’ve done that at his tombstone, rather than here. I can’t imagine being here would be too comfortable for them.’

  ‘What about us?’ said David. ‘What are we doing here?’ He didn’t sound angry, just a little sad.

  ‘I thought it would be good for you,’ said Nicola. ‘I don’t think I was right, was I?’

  ‘It’s fine, really,’ said David. He looked across at Nicola and her face showed lines of worry – caused by him, he realized with a start, and he felt briefly ashamed. This wasn’t how the evening was supposed to go. Without thinking he put his arm around her and pulled her closer to him, the pair of them still facing the stone, which seemed dwarfed by its awesome natural s
urroundings, an insignificant token.

  David could feel the shape of Nicola’s hip against his, and the gentle warmth of the fading sunlight on his back, both sensations giving him a tingle down his spine that he liked a lot.

  ‘There’s a card with the flowers,’ said Nicola, pulling away from him to reach it. ‘Colin, I’ll never forget,’ is all it said.

  ‘No signature,’ said Nicola. ‘Isn’t that a little odd? Don’t people always sign these things? Don’t they want others to know who left the flowers?’

  ‘Check you out, cynic girl. It doesn’t matter who left them, they know who they are, and presumably that’s all that matters.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like a mum or dad’s handwriting, either,’ Nicola continued. ‘It’s a real scrawl. It almost looks like a young boy’s writing or something.’ She held the card closer to her face, then passed it over to David.

  For a second David thought he recognized the handwriting, but the moment passed. That sort of thing wasn’t something he’d ever been good at – it was always more of a girl thing, wasn’t it, like spotting wedding rings on fingers – and he let the thought go from his head. She was right about one thing though, even David could see that it was no elderly mother or father’s writing, it was way too messy for that. Older generations always had better handwriting. But what did it matter? So someone was remembering Colin apart from his own folks, well, good. He bent and put the card carefully back in with the flowers.

  ‘This is hardly the thrilling, drunken evening of debauchery you promised me,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Nicola, deciding that enough was enough. ‘Let’s get the hell away from here and hit the Lochlands.’ She put her arm around him and playfully pulled him up, away from the stone. ‘Let the debauchery commence,’ she yelled, startling a crow into flight from the adjacent field, making them both jump, then laugh. They began running down the hill, using gravity to take them away from the past.

  The Lochlands was heaving, and to David’s dismay they were greeted with a rowdy cheer from a table round the corner when they pushed in the small door, abandoning the last of the day’s sunlight for the smoky rammy of the place. Somebody obviously knew they were coming. This was supposed to be just the two of them, him and Nicola. He tried to catch Nicola’s eye as she headed for the table, smiling and dragging David along with her.

  ‘Look who I found,’ she said to the table. There were half a dozen people squeezed into the corner, and every face was one that David immediately recognized, and yet he couldn’t think of a single name to go with any of the faces. This was a fucking nightmare. He wasn’t ready for all this shit.

  ‘The long-lost David Lindsay, everybody. David, you remember Alison, Carol, Debbie’ – she paused briefly to allow head nods down one side of the table – ‘Steve, Anne and Derek.’ There was some more nodding, smiles all round. Everyone looked fatter than they used to, their faces saggier, their hair shorter in the case of the girls (fuck, not girls, women, very definitely women), or gone in the case of the guy nearest him (was that Steve?) and the other guy, who surely didn’t wear specs before. He felt like he was drowning and his throat was dry. He pulled his arm away from Nicola’s hand, which was still gently anchoring him in reality.

  ‘What do you want to drink?’ he said to her.

  ‘Pint of lager, cheers.’

  He was at the bar in a shot, cursing, his face tripping him. He looked around at the Lochlands; it hadn’t changed a bit. There was football memorabilia covering the walls, framed photos of old Scotland World Cup squads peeking shamefully out from the corners they were tucked away in, signed shirts and scarves for a host of teams mounted everywhere. Two televisions in opposite corners of the room showed football and cricket from somewhere nameless around the world. He saw other faces that he recognized amongst the gangs of men and women sitting at the scatter of tables or crowding round the bar, the puggy, the jukebox. The faces seemed fainter than they should be, as if they were ghosts or faded photographs. He recognized the barman, now with grey around his temples; the same fucking barman that used to serve the lot of them when they were all under age, he was still here. The thought seemed somehow obscene. He ordered the pints and turned from the bar. Nicola was at his side. She looked him in the eye for the first time since they’d come in, and her knowing expression was hard to resist.

  ‘I thought it was going to be just the two of us.’

  ‘I never actually said that,’ she said. ‘I maybe just let you think that without correcting you. Look, you’re here for a reunion, so you might as well start reunioning, or whatever the correct verb is.’

  ‘It’s just that I wasn’t really psyched up for it yet,’ he said, realizing that his voice was getting whiny, hating the sound of it. ‘I mean, if you’d told me…’

  ‘If I’d told you, you probably wouldn’t have come, would you?’

  ‘I don’t know why I did come. I mean the whole thing.’

  Nicola stood back a little to take him in better. She understood, but also felt a little exasperated. He’d replied to her initial email, he’d met up with her, he’d agreed to come along to the reunion, even allowed himself to be taken to the cliffs, so why the hell was he moaning now?

  ‘Look, David, I don’t know why you’re pissed off, or even if you are really pissed off, because if you are, then I’m not sure why you’re even here. This is a bloody holiday, OK? Think of it like that. It’s a weekend away from the usual shit, something a bit different, just in a place where you happened to grow up. There is booze aplenty and there are friendly people to chat to, what more do you want?’

  He digested her outburst while the shouts, laughs and murmurs of the crowd enveloped them.

  ‘You’re right,’ he conceded when the pints came and he handed over a fiver. ‘Of course, you’re right. I’m an arsehole, OK? Let’s get fucking pished then, eh? And let’s get to know these miserable old schoolmates of ours all over again.’

  ‘Good,’ said Nicola, and she leaned over and unexpectedly gave him a peck on the cheek. ‘Now if we’re going to do this properly, I better get some shooters to go with these pints.’

  ‘Shhh,’ said Nicola, giggling and trying to put a finger to his lips. ‘You’ll wake my parents.’

  ‘What are we, fucking seventeen?’

  ‘Shhh, and watch the fucking swearing.’

  ‘What fucking swearing?’

  They stood in St Vigeans Road, an ordinary line of sandstone terraced houses that sloped up to the town’s Cairnie Hill. It was a two-minute walk from the Lochlands that had taken them at least half an hour, including a detour to MacDonald Park to play on the roundabout and swings.

  When the Lochlands’ chucking-out time came, the rest of the group around the table had decided to head down the West Port, maybe to Tropics (which was now called Rumours or something equally cheesy, the names changed but the places remained the same) to get a couple more drinks. Nicola had excused herself, saying she had to be up early to spend time with Amy, and David offered to walk her home. Their departure was met with catcalls and good-natured whistling, which neither of them minded.

  They had spent four hours drinking fast and talking shite to the people at the table. The conversation was stilted to begin with, especially for David, as he tried to remember the childhood lives of the people around him, and as he continually rehashed his mundane story of the past fifteen years. But as the evening went on and tongues loosened with alcohol, the chat picked up. The eight of them started the fun, scab-picking exercise of reminiscing about ‘the good old days’, days scarily stacked with all sorts of potential, potential that had, for the most part, remained unfulfilled.

  The crowd was much more amiable than David would’ve thought. Before tonight his impressions of them were as schoolchildren, with all the spiteful, self-centred, confused, jealous, wilful, half-formed attitudes that entailed. He remembered some of the things he’d done and said in 1988 and felt ashamed, so why shoul
d he judge the people around him on events, moments, snapshots in his brain from then?

  Somebody at the table mentioned their relief that everyone had turned out to have normal lives, normal jobs, normal fucked-up relationships. Nobody had become an astronaut, and nobody was a paedophile. Nicola had pointed out that astronauts and paedophiles almost never go to school reunions, it’s the regular ones that show up. Which was a very fair point, thought David, as he watched her effortlessly dip in and out of conversations with those around her. There she was chatting to Alison about her forthcoming wedding to someone high up at Standard Life; there she was listening attentively as Debbie told her about husband number two; and there she was swapping kid stories with Derek, whose eldest daughter was the same age as Amy. It was all so easy, thought David, this reunion malarkey.

  For all he’d had to drink, he was still sober enough to realize, as they stood outside the Lochlands and Nicola announced she was heading home, that this was his chance. When you’re drunk things seem both more and less clear, somehow.

  For Nicola’s part, well, of course she had engineered it, and she had hoped that he would offer to walk her home and not head on to the next pub. And it had worked. She didn’t know where the hell any of this was going, if it was going anywhere at all, but despite his occasional grumpiness, David was funny, clever and cute. That was more than enough to be going on with for now.

  Standing half-drunk outside her mum and dad’s house with a man, she was reminded of countless dates, drunken walks home, snogs with various boys (very definitely boys back then), all of whom had drifted into an ether of the past that was comforting but unimportant background noise to her life today.

  She looked at David and realized that they had their arms around each other. How had that happened? Had she done it first? Did it matter who had done it first? She was happy it had happened. She decided to kiss him, and so she did, long and deep and probably more forcefully than she would’ve if she’d been sober, her tongue playing with his in his mouth after a few seconds. She felt his hands moving over her back and her arse, and she moved her hands in similar fashion, pulling his thin body closer to her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d kissed like this, with tongues flicking, hands sweeping, a slight movement of her pelvis towards his, and all in the street, at night, under a streetlight throwing gleaming yellow rays over their entwined bodies. It was like she was seventeen all over again, except that she knew so much more about life, relationships, feelings and men than she could’ve ever dreamt of back then.