Tombstoning Read online

  Gary shook his head, almost imperceptibly, then turned back towards the game.

  ‘No. You don’t.’

  The half-time whistle blew, and a rush of Arbroath fans headed for the exits, piling across the road to Tutties for a traditional half-time pint. David and Gary joined the throng, got their pints in and stood against the outside wall of the pub, soaking up the sunshine as cars swished past on the Dundee Road. Another hustle back across the road and they were there for the second half. It was probably the only ground in the country where a half-time pint was possible, something the Arbroath fans were immensely proud of. Despite still losing 1–0 they sang more vocally than before, Gary and David joining in with a slapdash rendition of ‘There’s Ducks on Keptie Pond’. As if to repay their support, Brazil raced into the box from the left-hand side and latched onto a loose ball to put Arbroath equal. Gary, David and the rest of the fans leapt and shouted and cheered until they were hoarse, bouncing and taunting the Montrose lot. Six pints down and back on level terms, David thought – could be worse.

  As the jubilation died down, he noticed for the first time that most of the advertising hoardings around the ground were blank except for a couple of local pub signs and a large recruitment board for the Royal Marines. It made him think instantly of Neil.

  ‘Ever see Neil Cargill these days?’ he said.

  A look that David couldn’t quite pin down seemed to flash across Gary’s face before he quickly regained his composure, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets as he eventually spoke.

  ‘Not really. I’ve bumped into him once or twice in pubs over the years. But I think he keeps himself to himself, pretty much.’

  ‘I take it he did join the Marines, all those years ago.’

  Gary seemed to sigh, as if already tired of the subject.

  ‘Yeah, he did. Fought in the first Gulf War, apparently. At one point he was a copper as well, I think. Not sure what he does now. I heard he lived out Auchmithie way, for a while. Bit of a recluse.’

  ‘Really? Doesn’t sound like Neil,’ said David.

  Gary turned and fixed his gaze on David for a second time.

  ‘People do change, you know. Just because you haven’t thought about us for fifteen years doesn’t mean we’ve been frozen in time.’

  David was surprised by Gary’s tone, which was bitter yet firm, as if that was the end of the topic. He looked at Gary, who was back watching the football again. Maybe he had misjudged him, thought David. He realized now he’d felt a condescending sympathy for Gary earlier in the pub, something which was misplaced. Gary, Neil, Nicola, Colin, the whole fucking town and the whole situation, it was worth a lot more than his condescension, which was pretty much all he’d been giving it so far. He had considered himself above all this, observing the town’s inhabitants as if from a great height, pissing on them righteously. What did he have to be so righteous about?

  He turned back to watch the football. As he did, Brazil skied another shot miles over their heads and out the ground, and David joined in the lusty hoots of derision around him, smiling as he did so.

  Back in Tutties the mood was light-hearted and boisterous. After all, the sun was shining outside and Arbroath hadn’t been beaten by those Montrose bastards from up the road. David and Gary got another round in and snaffled the table next to the puggy. A teenager was compulsively firing pound coins into the machine, but getting nothing back.

  ‘David, isn’t it? David Lindsay?’

  They turned from watching the depressed kid at the puggy and saw Mr Bowman, their old maths teacher. Mr Bowman had been one of the cooler teachers when they’d been at school, and he’d been in the teachers’ five-a-side team that they’d played against in sixth year. He must’ve been about mid-thirties back then, which meant he was pushing fifty now. The five-a-sides was meant to be a relaxed lunchtime kickabout but gradually took on a terrible, competitive seriousness, the teachers trying (and mostly failing) to prove they still had it in them to beat this handful of cheeky upstart kids. It was an open secret that Mr Bowman had a budding drink problem back then, and he was clearly in a shambolic state now. The man’s eyes were a watery scarlet colour, as if a vodka–blood mixture would pour out the sockets at any moment, and his nose was a similar colour, the pigment leeching across his cheeks to his ears. His hair was thin, straggly and ash grey, and he wore mismatched suit trousers and jacket, both of which had green and brown stains all over them. He swayed that sway of the habitual drunk, moving his arms in an involuntary, syncopated way to balance the movements his unsteady legs were producing in his helpless torso.

  David was surprised he had recognized him. But years of drinking practice had clearly imbued Mr Bowman with the capacity not only to cope with his alcoholic state but to positively revel in it, to the extent that if you took the booze away from him he might not survive the traumatic separation.

  ‘And Gary Spink, isn’t it?’

  Despite being bloodshot, his eyes were keenly focussed, while his speech was clear and, by Christ, he was good at the names-to-faces game. David tried to do a quick calculation in his head of the number of pupils Mr Bowman must’ve had over the years, but he’d taken a fair pint himself and gave up almost as soon as he started.

  ‘Mr Bowman, how’s it going?’ he said.

  ‘Call me Jack, please. Mind if I take a seat?’ He didn’t wait for an answer, and slumped with expert lack of grace onto a spare stool at their table. The table wobbled a little as he nudged it, and a heavy glass ashtray rattled as he banged his pint down.

  ‘It’s quite a coincidence, meeting you two here,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ said Gary, finding his voice. ‘How so?’

  ‘I was just thinking about Colin – Colin Anderson – and that whole terrible business at the cliffs all those years ago.’

  Jesus Christ, thought David, was this going to come up every time he met anyone?

  ‘It could happen all over again, you see.’

  ‘What?’ David couldn’t see at all. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Jack fished a rolled-up newspaper out his back pocket and slowly unfolded it on the table. It was the local weekly rag which rarely had any news in it. When he had it flat, he twirled the paper towards the pair of them and stuck a chubby, greasy finger on the page.

  The headline read ‘Tombstoning Teenagers Risk Lives for Kicks’, and as David and Gary read down, they exchanged a look of disbelief which left them gaping at the paper slack-jawed. A craze had started amongst teenage boys, the article said, for jumping off the Arbroath cliffs into the sea at high tide. There had been several incidents witnessed by people walking their dogs and such like, kids apparently chucking themselves straight off the cliff face and falling up to two hundred feet into the water below. A spokesman for the coastguard said that in the office they had nicknamed it ‘tombstoning’ because it was ‘one of the fastest ways of killing yourself’. There was more to the story, padding about the various incidents and quotes from gormless witnesses. As Gary scanned the paper, David looked up at Jack. The combination of umpteen pints and a quick change of focus made him feel very drunk, and he leant his hand against the table firmly to get his balance back.

  ‘Fucking idiots,’ he said.

  ‘My thoughts precisely,’ said Jack. ‘But it really is taking off, if you’ll pardon the pun. There have been quite a few sightings of kids doing this, and although no one’s been formally identified, I’m sure several of them are in our current fifth and sixth years.’

  ‘It’s like the Darwin awards, isn’t it?’ said Gary. ‘A fantastically stupid way to die.’

  ‘Well, no one’s died yet, thank God, but it will surely only be a matter of time.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said David. ‘This has nothing to do with Colin. He fell. And he was on his own and drunk, so it’s hardly the same thing, is it?’

  ‘Nevertheless, it is connected,’ said Jack. ‘I believe the craze has grown up around the legend of Colin’s death. God on
ly knows how or why, but the boys today revere Colin for some reason, see him as a tragically fated local hero.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ said Gary. ‘How do you know, if you don’t know who’s doing it?’

  ‘Graffiti. The last few months have seen graffiti appearing all over the place relating to Colin’s death. “Colin Anderson R. I. P., died a hero” had to be wiped off a wall at the school. References to “The Tombstoners” are scratched into walls and desks all over the place. And I believe there was similar stuff up at his gravestone and the memorial at the cliffs too, which the council had to remove sharpish.’

  ‘That’s insane,’ said David. ‘Colin didn’t jump and he wasn’t a fucking hero. He didn’t have a death wish and he wasn’t a fucking adrenalin junkie.’ He was getting angry now and shouting, and people were starting to look over in the direction of their table, all except the kid at the puggy, still plugging in the quids. ‘He was just a mate and his death was a stupid accident.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Jack, swigging his pint. ‘And you both know that, but it seems these boys don’t know that. Who knows how these things start, but I fear it’ll take someone dying for it to stop, and maybe not even then.’

  ‘Can’t you speak to them?’ said Gary.

  ‘Why would they listen to teachers?’ Jack took another large swig from his pint and a sly look came over his face. ‘Maybe if one of you came to school to speak to the fifth and sixth years, you know, as a friend of Colin’s, to explain that he didn’t jump. That might help the situation.’

  David and Gary suddenly both felt fished in. Jack had clearly thought of the idea as soon as he’d seen them, and had been leading up to it from the start. The crafty alky bastard, thought David. Well, he won’t get me hooked.

  ‘Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’ll be back in Arbroath again after this weekend,’ he said. ‘I’m only back for the school reunion tonight, then I’m heading back to Edinburgh.’

  Gary got a look of panic in his eyes. Both Jack and David turned to look at him as he spluttered a little into his beer.

  ‘I’m n-n-not very good at public speaking,’ he said, stuttering as if to prove his point. ‘Plus I’m not very good with kids either. And I don’t really know what happened with Colin, so I really don’t know if…’

  ‘Fine, if you don’t want to,’ said Jack. ‘But it could make all the difference to some poor young bastard.’

  No pressure, thought David as he sat drinking his pint and feeling relieved. He looked at Gary and felt sorry for him, but rather him than me, he thought.

  Gary crumbled under the pressure and agreed to try and speak to some of the older kids sometime in the next week. Jack unearthed a pen from somewhere in his jacket and wrote Gary’s number down on the margin of the newspaper. He had got what he wanted but didn’t seem in any hurry to leave.

  ‘Either of you lads ever see Neil Cargill these days? You used to hang about with him, didn’t you? The four of you, in your own wee gang.’

  ‘Never seen him,’ said David.

  ‘Not in years,’ said Gary.

  ‘Did you say you were here for a class reunion?’ said Jack.

  ‘Yeah, just down the road at Bally’s,’ said David.

  ‘I think it’s called the Waterfront now,’ said Gary into his pint.

  ‘I’m still getting over the name change from Smokies,’ said Jack, chuckling to himself. ‘That’s what happens when you live in a place like Arbroath as long as I have, the pubs all change their names so frequently that there’s no point in trying to keep up.’

  ‘That happens in Edinburgh too, right enough,’ said David.

  ‘Do you think Neil will be at the reunion?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Doubt it,’ said Gary. ‘Haven’t seen him around in ages, don’t know what he’s been up to.’

  ‘Shame,’ said Jack. ‘It’s always good for old friends to catch up, relive old times.’

  ‘You think?’ said David.

  ‘Of course,’ said Jack. ‘Don’t you?’

  David had doubts but said nothing. He tried to picture what Neil Cargill would look like now. He was always the most direct, no-bullshit, no-nonsense member of the ADS when they’d hung out together, something matched by his physique – stocky, barrel torso; short, powerful legs; and a dark, serious face that turned veiny when he got agitated. He had never been any good academically and that, combined with dyslexia diagnosed too late, had meant that he’d re-sat a year at primary school. He was a year older than the rest of them, yet he was still in remedial English. He’d had a much older brother Craig who at the age of eighteen, when Neil was only eleven, had somehow managed to wrap his car around a tree on the back road to Arbirlot on a clear spring evening. The police estimated he must’ve been doing over ninety miles an hour. He died instantly. Neil had carried that weight around with him, occasionally falling into sombre moods only to snap out of them with bursts of aggressive excitement at nothing in particular.

  Despite all that, Neil had been a good friend to the other three, always reliable and willing to back them up in a stand-off, which was pretty handy because he was one of the hardest kids in town when it came to fist fighting. And despite being short he definitely looked his extra year, easily swanning into offies, pubs and Breakers’ snooker hall confidently at the front, getting the round in and covering for the rest of them. Driven by a need to impress his parents – who were much older than David’s, Colin’s or Gary’s folks, and who were burdened by the same desperate sadness over Craig’s death that Neil carried – he’d set his heart on joining the Marines from secondary school onwards. The Condor base just outside Arbroath was home to the 45 Commando Unit, and they did a lot of recruiting from the local schools, but it was made pretty clear that only the fittest and hardest need even bother applying for the Marines, the rest could fuck off to the regular army or fuck off entirely. Neil had no problems with fitness or hardness, but he did struggle with the basic literacy and numeracy requirements, until finally, with the help of a rather hippyish dyslexia specialist that he paid for out of his own Saturday job wages, he passed the Marines’ entrance exam in June of 1988. Basic training started two months later, so Neil had spent the summer relaxing and drinking.

  So had the Marines worked out? Were his parents proud? Hadn’t Gary said he’d joined the police? There were so many holes in David’s knowledge of the past, of the collective past of this town, there wasn’t a hope in hell of him ever catching up, even if he wanted to. He wondered if Neil would come along tonight, and thought it would be good if he did.

  He looked at his watch.

  ‘Shit, it’s coming on seven o’clock,’ he said, quickly arsing the rest of his pint and nudging Gary. ‘We better get a bend on. I’ve gotta get back to the B&B and get something to eat before I head back out.’

  ‘We could just stay out,’ said Gary. ‘It’s only just down the road to Bally’s.’

  It was tempting, but David had had seven or eight pints and nothing to eat, and he needed to freshen up and get his shit together for meeting Nicola. Christ, he hadn’t thought about Nicola for hours. He tried to picture their kiss from last night, but it seemed blurry and murky already in his memory, as if viewed from the bottom of the Keptie Pond. He hoped he’d get the opportunity to refresh that memory tonight.

  Both David and Gary got up to leave, Jack waving his pint glass at them nonchalantly as they pushed their stools back. ‘I’ll give you a phone through the week, Gary,’ he said. ‘Sort out the details for this talk at the school.’ Gary looked pained at the reminder, but smiled thinly anyway.

  ‘Cheers Jack, nice meeting you again,’ said David.

  ‘Aye, and all the best to you too, David. Enjoy yourselves tonight, the pair of you. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’

  They pushed through the smoky babble of the pub and out the door, into the fresh air of a beautifully sunny Scottish evening. David felt the sun on his face and couldn’t believe how good the weather had been recently. He patted
Gary on the shoulder and arranged to meet him in an hour and a half in Bally’s along with the other dregs of Keptie High School’s class of ’88. The thought didn’t fill him with dread, and as he walked purposefully up to the High Common he even started to hum a nondescript tune.

  6

  Reunion

  Nicola downed another double gin and tonic and looked around. This had been a mistake. Not the idea of a reunion as such, but the sticky-floored venue they’d chosen was a massive miscalculation. Within ten seconds of entering the place she’d almost been puked on by a rubber-limbed boy with curly hair and the baggiest jeans she’d ever seen.

  Bally’s was packed with kids old enough to be her offspring. Nicola knew it was a cliché to think that, but she couldn’t help it. It was the nightclub that time forgot. Nicola hadn’t seen the likes since they stopped showing The Hitman and Her, that ridiculous late-night celebration of the old-school, small-town disco mentality hosted by Pete Waterman and Michaela Strachan in the late 80s. These days Waterman was doing a television documentary about trains and Strachan was presenting wildlife programmes. Nicola felt similarly out of touch with her past in the face of the flashing lights, mirrorball, dry ice (dry ice, for Christ’s sake, she thought) and wrought iron and perspex that filled the large cattle-market dancefloor and sheltered booths arranged around it on two levels.

  The reunion had hired out the ‘executive suite’ area of the club, which was little more than a handful of booths cordoned off with one of those old-style barriers – twisted rope tied between small stands. A squat, burly guy in a black pilot jacket stood guard over the entrance. They did have a section of the bar to themselves, which meant that at least they didn’t have to jockey for position and beers with the rest of the scum, avoiding the resultant arse-pinching and lewd comments that would entail.

  Nicola was taking full advantage of the bar. She ordered another double gin and tonic and looked at the people filling the executive suite. There were about twenty-five here already, and they were expecting the same again to arrive. In the Lochlands last night there had been half a dozen friendly faces, swapping stories in a laid-back easy-going atmosphere. The current setting, with the shrieking kids half her age and the collection of thirty-something failures with droopy faces, seemed desperately unappealing.