The Novice and Other Stories
Gavin R. Dobson
Published by
Librario Publishing Ltd.
www.librario.com
Formatted for eBook
by
North Highland Publishing Ltd
www.northhighlandpublishing.com
Smashwords Edition
Front cover image The Flying Dutchman
painted by Alan Macdonald.
Copyright 2007 Gavin R. Dobson
The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work. No part of this book may be reproduced without the author’s permission.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, event or incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or criminal cases, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Foreword
Every halfwit and bookseller will tell you there is no market for short stories these days. Except, maybe, for about five hundred million commuters in the Western world who cram into tight aluminum tubes each day and wish they had something succinct, educated and amusing to read. Or who wish they had a broader choice of contemporary readability than those 300 page boilerplate International Best Sellers with less substance than the cardboard boxes in which they are packed. Or who wish they could pick up, engage and finish a story in the twenty minutes it takes to fall asleep while their taxiing aircraft grinds along the tarmac towards takeoff.
There are also about a billion people who lay in bed every evening longing for a small bite of fiction to read but who are too knackered to take on a full-blooded novel after a day’s work. Bite sized food, bite sized literature.
This book of short stories is a sequel to Tales of a Free Spirit, published by Librario in 2005. It consists of twelve stories. Ten are vignettes at different stages in the life of Geordie Kinloch and offer a familiar range of predicaments.
The Novice describes Geordie’s initiation at a merchant bank in the City of London in the days when school, university, tailor and club helped determine the passage of a career track. Raw talent provided another route, of course. Geordie’s merchant banking career would have ended in an early disaster had Mr Edwards, the vigilant commissionaire, not steered him out of the building and into a taxi.
Palenque is a ruined Mayan City in the jungles of Tabasco in tropical Mexico. It was the intended climax of a bohemian pilgrimage to Central America but it became the scene of a bitter disappointment. Geordie’s mounting obsession with his missing lover leads to a series of strange experiences, culminating in a Dorian Gray-like moment signaling her death in an earthquake.
The Dubious Gift was inherited by Geordie. If only he had been better coached or more self-disciplined in its use, he, like his forbears, might have turned the gift to great advantage. The story ends with a prayer for his small son that he might use the Gift more wisely than he did.
The Prees Branch is a mysterious and beautiful dead end section of the Shropshire Union Canal, decked with water lilies, populated with dragon flies and rare plants. Geordie and Josie had no idea that it was reputed to be the most haunted canal in Britain when they moored their barge in this idyllic backwater.
The Billet Doux arrived one morning and inspired Geordie to the heights of mischief. Josie was in America for the summer and Geordie did not have the benefit of her restraining influence. His practical joke backfired – literally – and the moral of this tale is never to mess around with Government departments like the State Medicine Bureau.
The Tea Rose was a madeleine moment, when the scent of a rose bud in middle age brought a heartrending scene crashing back into Geordie’s life forty years later. He takes his elderly mother to a clinic and walks around the streets of Edinburgh he knew as a child. The backdrop has barely changed but life has exacted its toll.
Passing Bells is a homage to the man Geordie considered to be one of the greatest British poets of the twentieth century. He uses the pretext of a shortened business trip to Paris to slope off to the scene of a skirmish on the Western Front in 1918.
Pier A is the story of a friend of Geordie’s who came dramatically unstuck in New York. It highlights the isolation and loneliness that can be experienced in a strange city leading to desperate nihilism and massive destruction.
AlkawaSi Jamel is a sequel, in some respects, to Pier A. Geordie travels extensively around the globe on business. He gets an unexpected insight into the current thinking and strategy of a terrorist group who masquerade as spiritually enlightened, world- wise business travellers.
Reggie’s Fish is an anecdote about that most terrible of days in the turbulent history of New York City. A tiny spark of hope is kindled when two goldfish are found intact in a water-filled glass bowl in the apocalyptic wreckage of the World Trade Center.
These stories are in no particular chronological or spatial order. They are disembodied fictitious vignettes of a fictional life. Readers may join the dots to form a fuller picture of Geordie. His character is mercurial, independent, cynical, always up for a jape, lucky, affluent, irreverent, bright yet curiously suggestible. He is a product of his times, raised in the Age of Aquarius, the quintessential baby boomer, the dreamer. But it is all fiction, fiction, fiction.
Geordie’s openness for adventure is sometimes mistaken for naivety and lands him in awkward predicaments time and again. Not all the people he gets involved with share his youthful enthusiasms. To some, he exudes the aura of an innocent traveller ripe for plucking. When he was a boy this syndrome was endearing. By middle age it starts to look eccentric, if not dangerously naive.
The episodes are played out in New York, Mexico, England, Geneva, Vienna, France and Balnadarg, Geordie’s ancestral home in Scotland. Although he may flip and flap in the wind like a kite tethered to earth by the thinnest of strings, his soul is rooted in the granite soil of the Highlands. He encounters the supernatural in the matter-of-fact way of true Scottish Highlanders, many of whom live normal lives on the cusp of parallel worlds and don’t understand the fuss made about haunted rooms and paranormal phenomena. Our everyday world acknowledges trees, cars, houses, steel mills, people, politicians and shopping malls. Why doesn’t it equally recognize the parallel universe of ghosts, spirits and poltergeists that populate and enrich the same landscape?
Two tales in this book do not feature Geordie Kinloch as their subject. They were inspired by the experiences of friends and the stories couldn’t be made to fit Geordie’s character. I felt they made a worthwhile postscript to this collection of short stories.
The Leopard is the story of a British couple who go hiking in South Africa. The novelty of their surroundings throws them off balance. Luck and traditional African paranormal intervention, possibly, save the day. So nobody gets killed and everyone has the last laugh in a hot tub.
The Last Rebel is a vision of Scotland in the imminent future that has lost its soul and brain to political correctness. I showed this to a young friend and she responded, ‘So, what’s the story?’ This is therefore a particularly frightening story, precisely because it’s no story at all.
When Tales of a Free Spirit came out, many people asked if the stories were autobiographical. Many friends pointed out how many autobiographical insights they recognized. At the risk of protesting too loudly, here’s the scoop. None of the Tales of a Free Spirit was autobiographical. Each one contained germs of personal experience or observation from which its narrative grew. The beauty of fiction is its limitless potential for embellishment and deviation in the name of a good story. Why would any writer limit a narrative to the constraints of personal experiences?
Thus the Novice. It has evolved into a darker collection than Tales of a Free Spirit. The Novice, The Prees Branch, Billet Doux and The Leopard are light hearted, but there is a melancholy streak to some other stories, culminating in the existentially seedy tale of Pier A. I am not conscious of letting the tone of this book drift towards darkness, but each tale has a life of its own and goes where it must.
Thanks and love to Terrill and my beautiful children, Henry, Olivia and Alyssa, of whom I am ridiculously proud. I have good fortune in having both parents fit and well at the age of 87. Thanks to my sharp old Dad for reviewing this text. I doubt I will reach anywhere close to his ripe age, let alone make a creative contribution to my son’s work in my dotage. Signs of rust and burnout are already spreading. In the meantime, I try to live by the mantra of Carpe Diem, every day.
I would like to acknowledge appreciation for the circumstances that recently had me work in New York for 16 months. While on business I was afforded another chance of a sweep through old haunts to see friends from Chicago to Boston, San Francisco, Milan, Paris, Vienna, Los Angeles, Baja California and dozens of other places. I never imagined I would be giving speeches again in Oakbrook, Berkeley, the suburbs of Atlanta and Southern New Hampshire, working the circuit that made my career twenty years ago.
I travelled with urgency and did everything I possibly could in the time allotted to each city. I caught up with friends in Marin County and Beverly Hills, spent an afternoon at the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame, skied in Beaver Creek, attended Mass in Milan’s Duomo (and me a Presbyterian . . . ) and ate at some of the best restaurants in the world in the company of first class minds. My gratitude to Bill Wilby for these opportunities.
I would also like to dedicate this book to my godchildren, Kit McLaren, James Luckhoo, Lucy Campbell, Tiernan Lean, Andrew Dobson and Erin Hale. I have been a lousy godfather but want you to know that I’m very proud of you and I look forward to being the best of friends now we’re all pretty much grown up. At least, you are.
The Novice
‘Good morning. May I speak to Geordie Kinloch?’
‘Speaking.’
‘This is Perry Sappleton’ the caller paused, waiting for a spark of recognition. ‘I’m a partner at Sappleton Crosswell. Calling to introduce myself and invite you to a lunch we’re hosting for some institutional clients on Thursday next week. August 16th. We’d love to have you over.’
‘Hang on a second. Let me check the diary.’ Geordie went though the motions, knowing perfectly well he had no plans for lunch on Thursday August 16th, or any other day, for that matter. After a moment of businesslike paper shuffling he replied, ‘Yes, that would be fine. I’d love to come over.’
‘Excellent. One o’clock, the dining room at St Mary Axe. Thursday August 23rd.’
‘Done.’ Geordie added, ‘As a matter of interest, how did you know my name?’
‘Heavens, we’ve had close ties with Kornfeld Neuhoffer for generations. Sappletons and Kornfelds have traded together out of Savannah and Hamburg since the 1700s. Cotton, machines and coal, then trade acceptances. Whenever new graduates come on board at KN we like to have 'em over for lunch. It’s a matter of time before we’re working on deals together so may as well get to know them early. Hence the phone call.’
‘Well, that’s very kind of you. I look forward to meeting you next week.’
‘Goodbye.’
Geordie put the phone down, feeling flushed.
‘What was that all about?’ asked Alex, whose desk was opposite Geordie’s.
‘That was all about being invited to lunch at Sappleton Crosswell next Thursday.’
‘In aid of what?’
‘In aid of being the latest hire at Kornfeld Neuhoffer.’
‘I see. Make sure you hold your knife and fork properly. London bankers to Czar Nicholas and Haile Selassie, don’t you know.’
‘A fat lot of good it did them.’
‘Don’t forget to tell Denise to put it on the office calendar. KN are pretty sticky about knowing who’s out and where.’
‘Sure.’
As he dressed that Thursday morning Geordie felt curiously apprehensive. It was the first business lunch of his career. What would he talk about? He knew nothing. Did it matter? Would a captain of industry ask him to explain the delta of a commodity option contract? Would he be expected to have a view on Japanese interest rates? What about the European velocity of money? Or Kornfeld’s methodology for allocating shares in an oversubscribed IPO? No. He’d keep his trap shut, play the traditional Yorkshire- man’s game: see all, hear all, say nowt.
He stood to attention before the full length mirror at the end of the hall. He was the very model of a modern merchant banker. Slim, decked in a double-breasted Savile Row pinstripe suit, highly- polished black wing-tips, blue Jermyn Street herringbone shirt , red spotted silk power tie. He looked splendid, even if he did feel tentative. His confidence soared as his heels rang down the marble lobby of Kornfeld Neuhoffer an hour later.
‘Nice threads this morning, Mr Kinloch.’
‘Thank you, Mr Edwards.’
The veteran commissionaire held open the door to the elevator lobby and smiled paternally as the nascent financier strode through.
‘Have a great day, Mr Kinloch.’
‘Thank you, Mr Edwards. You too.’
At 12.45 Geordie rose from his desk and left the building. It was a warm, sunny day and the office girls looked pretty after an unusually warm summer in London. He crossed Bishopsgate and walked through Leadenhall Market. He noted the hanging partridges, hares and rabbits ‘fresh from Norfolk’, written in chalk on the board. He loved the ancient link evoked between City finance and the life of an English country squire. He hadn’t been in the City long, but already felt drawn to its web of historic threads reaching back to Roman days. He crossed Fenchurch Street and strolled along Cheapside to St Mary Axe.
Geordie entered a Romanesque archway which opened into a courtyard. A short brick-paved driveway swept past a discreet glass entrance set into an impressive oak frame. A highly burnished ancient brass plate inscribed with the barely discernible words Sappleton Crosswell was fixed on the wall to the right of the entrance. He entered the lobby. It was well-lit and minimal, with clean, expensive lines and two long, low red Italian sofas facing each other across a glass table in the seating area. They instantly reminded Geordie of two parked Ferraris. The only hint of the firm’s antiquity was a spectacular luminous desert landscape by Edward Lear hanging behind the reception desk.
‘Can I help you sir?’
‘Yes. My name is Geordie Kinloch and I’m a guest of Perry Sappleton for lunch today.’
‘The Lord Sappleton is expecting you. Mr Wakehurst will show you the way to the dining room.’
Geordie was led up a shallow flight of steps leading to a wide corridor lined with 18th and 19th century portraits of grandees from the Sappleton and Crosswell banking dynasties. They had the full, kind, ruddy faces of liberal English squires, not the flint-featured, hawk-eyed expressions found in so many banking portraits. Mr. Wakehurst stopped and knocked at a panelled Georgian door. It was opened from within.
‘Ah, Geordie Kinloch. How nice to meet you!’ His hand was grasped firmly. ‘Perry Sappleton. Find us all right? It’s a bit of a labyrinth in this part of the City, isn’t it?’ Sappleton was a handsome man in his late forties, exuding all the easy charm of a tenth generation merchant banker. His short wavy black hair was swept backwards in the manner of an Argentinian polo player Geordie had encountered recently.
‘No, actually I had no problem finding you. It took just ten minutes to walk from our office.’ Geordie felt Sappleton’s instant approval of his Huntsman suit and Lobb shoes. He knew he fitted in that room.
‘That’s my boy, I see you know your way around the City already. Let me introduce you to Sebastien Bourgeuil des Chantiers, our correspondent in Geneva.’ He shook hands with the wiry, impeccably groomed Frenchman. He had the cold grey eyes of an accountant. Watch my words around this man, he thought as they smiled at each other.
‘And this is Sir Gerald Ramswick, Chief Executive of Conglomerated Aerospace, and Chris Forbes, his Treasurer.’
‘How do you do.’ He recognized Ramswick from the recent press barrage surrounding the redundancy of 6000 Welsh employees ‘for the future viability of this great British company.’ The jobs re-emerged in Bangalore and Poland. Ramswick smiled thinly. His cast-off handshake told Geordie that he was irrelevant to the man.
‘And have you met Lord Peakleigh, Chairman of Trinity Detergent? We recently launched a EuroYen convertible for them and will shortly be returning to the market for a second tranche. James, meet Geordie Kinloch, the pick of the litter this year at Kornfelds.’
‘Welcome to the club. Who d’you work with there?’
‘I work for Henry Kornfeld in Corporate Finance’.
‘Knew him well at the Snitter Institute. Damn good cross country runner. Won the Brickle House Cup three years running. Running, ha, ha!’
Geordie liked Lord Peakleigh immediately; he was a jovial and genuine sort, more secure and not self-important like the others.
‘Finally I’d like you to meet Tom Chance and Hugh St John, my shadows in corporate finance.’ The young men were slightly older than Geordie. Their broad smiles could almost pass for genuine, but their appraising glances betrayed a certain reservation. They were far too clever to be unconditional at a first meeting with Geordie, or anyone else. Snits to the core.
‘Now, what would you like to drink? Pablo here is famous for his Bloody Maries.’ Sappleton pronounced the name Pableau in an exquisitely patronizing manner.
‘Then I will try a Bloody Mary.’ Geordie seldom drank alcohol at lunchtime. Even during his student days before Rugby international matches, when his friends quaffed beer by the quart, he would discreetly nurse one pint through the chaos. Nobody noticed. He hated losing control of his day, even if the afternoon was about to be spent hurling abuse at Frenchmen at Twickenham.
‘Your good health’ Geordie raised the glass and sipped the Bloody Mary. It was smooth and peppery with a mellifluous kick. Soon he was engaged in a lively debate on business ethics with Sir Gerald Ramswick, to Sappleton’s consternation and the discreet amusement of his young assistants. Tom signaled Pablo to keep Geordie’s glass topped. By the time the eight were seated for lunch at 1.30 he had sipped his way through an immoderate quantity of the best Russian vodka.
The first course was Guacamole releve au piment d’Espelette accompanied by flutes of lightly sparkling South African wine. Geordie let the conversation run around him and sat back to enjoy the poetry of the occasion. Topics ebbed and flowed. Lord Peakleigh talked about regional tariffs for detergent products in South Asia and how the only way round them was to build factories in emerging countries. That’s why he needed to raise finance.
Ramswick was proud of his policies, declaring that Conglomerated Aerospace would shortly be in a position to pay a special dividend to its shareholders. He appointed Sappleton Crosswell on the spot to be agents for the transaction. Lord Sappleton winked at Tom and Hugh. Lunch had just paid for itself a thousandfold.
Geordie finished his succulent filet mignon and was savouring a third glass of 1975 Leoville Barton in cloud-cuckoo land. He couldn’t keep his eyes off two exquisite full-length portraits facing each other from opposite walls of the dining room. They were by Singer Sargent. One was an Edwardian beauty on a staircase, her ivory ball gown curving with the banisters. Her sharp blue eyes and jet black hair were set off by an emerald necklace on a plunging white neck. In the haze he felt troubled. Where can you find such women today? The other portrait was presumably her husband, the seventh Lord Sappleton, maybe, a tall young man in a white tropical suit leaning languidly on the same staircase. His thin mouth sneered at the world with all the conceit of a viscount in high empire. One word kept crossing Geordie’s mind as he studied that face. It was c**t.
Sebastien Bourgeuil des Chantiers observed Geordie’s detachment and used a conversational lull as coffee was being served to bring him back to the present.
‘So Geordie, what’s Kornfeld Neuhoffer working on these days? Any interesting deals in the offing?’
All eyes turned to Geordie.
‘Deals? Well . . . er . . . yes, we have the usual flow of transactions. I’m working on a couple of listings on The London Stock Exchange for well-known international companies which want access to our capital markets. We do a huge amount of bond underwriting work. That’s our bread and butter. We have the Russian IPO that everyone’s talking about. Personally I think it’s rubbish and wouldn’t trust the Russians as far as I can throw them.’
‘You’re quite right Geordie, the Romanovs were clients of ours. Things haven’t been the same since. No honour in Russia any more. None whatsoever.’
‘Any M&A activity?’ Bourgeuil des Chantiers chipped in lightly.
‘Yes, we’re quite active in the UK, Europe and America.’
‘Afraid I’m going to have to get back to the grind, Perry. It’s been a wonderful lunch. See you at the club on Tuesday?’ Lord Peakleigh excused himself from the table. This was the cue for Sir Gerald Ramswick and Chris Forbes, ‘Our car’s been waiting downstairs for half an hour. We should head off too. Wonderful lunch.’
Geordie looked at his watch. It was 3 o’clock.
‘I should be heading back too. Let you get back to your desks.’ He caught a glance between Tom and Hugh. Bourgeuil des Chantiers intervened, ‘Geordie, why don’t you stay for a few minutes to finish your coffee?’
Sappleton returned to the room after escorting his other guests to their cars. He pulled up a chair and sat beside Geordie with an air of comfortable familiarity, topping up all the surrounding glasses with port from a silver-mounted decanter.
‘Hugh, why don’t you call Henry Kornfeld’s secretary? Tell her that Geordie won’t be back for an hour or so. Her name’s Joyce.’
‘I’ll do it right away.’ He left the room.
Geordie was extremely flattered to be the object of undivided attention from The Lord Sappleton and his distinguished acolytes. He had clearly made it to the Inner Sanctum of High Finance in the City of London.
‘Smoke?’ Sappleton offered Geordie a humidor.
‘That would be nice. Thank you.’ He unscrewed an aluminium tube and tapped out a tight Cuban cigar. He was too far gone for niceties so nipped off the end with his front teeth and spat the tip, discreetly he thought, into a napkin. He folded it carelessly and left it on the table before him. Bourgeuil des Chantiers raised an eyebrow at Sappleton. That thin smile. Willing hands offered him fire but he chose to use the Georgian candlestick instead. He held the cigar to it until the end was in flames, blew it out and sucked until the tip was incandescent. He took an enormous drag and sat back, rolling the cigar sensuously between thumb and forefinger as he exhaled a cloud of blue smoke. If my father could see me now.
‘More coffee?’
‘Yes, thank you. That would be nice.’
‘Pableau . . . ’ Sappleton barely uttered the word when the tiny translucent Meissen cup was refilled with black Guatemalan coffee. Geordie dropped a brown sugar lump in the cup and added a dab of cream, trying to find focus as he stirred.
‘Port?’
‘Thank you.’ Geordie motioned to Sappleton to top up his glass.
‘So tell us about the M&A situations you’re working on.’ Bourgeuil des Chantiers persisted with the question he had asked earlier. Geordie’s hosts had positioned their chairs in a semicircle around him. They were eating out of his hand, like Christ surrounded by the Elders in the Temple, marveling at his precociousness, wisdom and intelligence.
In the thickening haze he noticed that his hosts were not participating as his glass was topped up. They sipped coffee and mineral water. He observed the eagerness with which they cast looks at each other as they pressed him with questions. He dimly remembered the gist of some of them:
‘What kind of war chest does United Construction have to mount a bid? Who do you think they’d want to buy? Would they look at Federated Drywall in the USA?’ To this last question, Geordie responded, ‘Actually we’re in active negotiations on their behalf.’
It was now four o’clock and he was as drunk as he had ever been. Feeling quite heroic for cracking the Holy of Financial Holies he staggered into the street, promising mutual love and eternal friendship to his great new friends. Milord Sappleton’s parting words were, ‘We’ll have to do this again Geordie.’
He had arrived.
But only as far as Leadenhall Market. He could no longer steer his legs towards Bishopsgate and had to prop himself against shop windows and market stalls. ‘Oi, piss off mate’, was another conversation he was to dimly recall. He vaguely realized he was in trouble and had probably broken every rule in the book. It took him an hour to accomplish a seven minute walk. He was mighty disheveled by the time he arrived in the Bank’s lobby.
Mr Edwards would not let him into the elevator, steering him discreetly instead into the little side room reserved for commissionaires. He’d seen graduates in a similar condition before. One was fired not long ago for being drunk and disorderly. The bank was getting a good deal less tolerant of its young gentlemen’s behaviour these days. Ten years ago there was the young Lord P . . . who stole a bus at lunchtime and slammed into a rank of taxis. Thousands of pounds of damage, but he went on to become rather a good banker and was now in charge of Asia for Kornfelds. Mr Edwards rather liked young Mr Kinloch and didn’t think he deserved to get fired quite so early in his career at Kornfeld Neuhoffer.
‘I don’t think you should go upstairs, Mr Kinloch, Sir. ‘I’ll call down your secretary.’
‘Jolly good.’ Geordie slumped into a chair.
Denise appeared, not quite sure what to expect. Her face was part frown, part smirk. ‘Blimey Geordie, you really did it this time.’
She quickly realized that he needed help more than castigation at this exact moment. She’d have her fun later.
‘Tell you what. I’ll get your stuff from upstairs and Mr
Edwards’ll get you a taxi to take you home.’
When the cab driver saw Geordie’s condition he read Mr Edwards the Riot Act for inflicting the ‘pissed yoof’ on his taxi. Mr Edwards slipped him a £20 note ‘for cleaning to the up’olstery as may be necessary’ and the volatile package made its way through the rush hour traffic to Battersea.
Geordie made it home without fouling the taxi, miraculously held back by the thunderous looks he kept getting from the driver and his Riot Act. He didn’t make it past the front door, however, and a very expensive lunch exploded violently over the smart steps of Prince of Wales Villas.
He took the next day off, during which he became increasingly aware of his compromising behaviour at lunch the day before. He had an atrabilious hangover. By early afternoon he began to feel clear enough to call Lord Sappleton, ‘I want to thank you for having me to lunch yesterday. I apologize if I may have been indiscreet.’
‘Not at all, old chap. Pas de probleme. It was great to meet you. We’ll do it again. I look forward to working with you on joint deals in the future.’
This reassurance did not make Geordie feel better. He could only dimly recall the conversation but had the uneasy sense that Sappleton had taken him for a ride.
Trading volume in Federated Drywall shares rose sharply over the next week. Sappleton Crosswell accumulated a big stake in the company on behalf of discretionary clients and its house trading account. The share price rose 20%.
It only became known that they had accumulated such a large position when the Federated Drywall bid was called off and the share price collapsed 50% one morning three weeks later. Alex was staring at his share monitor and whistled, ‘Geordie my man. Look at this. Sappy Crosswell held 31% of Fed Drywall. They’ve been creamed. They were recent purchasers of the stock, too. Why the hell would they have bought so much of such a crappy company? Everybody knows they’re in trouble.’
Geordie muttered under his breath ‘Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people’ while redoubling his effort to appear preoccupied with a company spreadsheet.
A Dubious Gift
One of his tasks as a young lad was to race around the house in the early evening to close the curtains. It didn’t add much to the warmth of the Georgian rooms, but at least helped to keep the draughts under control. Curtains lent a layer of protection against the darkening Autumn dusk and the afternoon frosts of midwinter.
The routine began in the sitting room supervised by his great aunt. He was instructed to carefully unhook the green silk ties and let the curtains fall free. He tugged the brass-knobbed pulley that hauled them across the cold expanse of the bay window. Then he drew the curtains in the dining room before running upstairs to seal the bedrooms and the bathroom.
Sometimes he tapped on his mother’s door, slowly opened it and switched on the bedside lamp with its pink floral shade, throwing a soft light over the bed. He stood for a moment at the window staring at the damp street cobbles in the dying November light, then pulled her curtains together. He took particular care to align the chintzy rose patterns so that no crack let a draught into the room.
‘Good night Mum.’ He whispered and closed the door.
He reappeared downstairs, breathless, and stood to attention before his great aunt. She looked over her spectacles and smiled at the boy.
‘Did you close all the curtains?’
‘Yes, Great Aunt Winnie.’
‘Cheeky wee bugger,’ she muttered under her breath, ‘Aunt
Winnie will suffice. Did you close all the doors?’
‘Yes, Aunt Winnie.’
‘Did you put the chain on the front door?’
‘Yes, Aunt Winnie.’
‘Did you turn the lights off?’
‘Yes, Aunt Winnie. Except the hall and the stair lights.’ He fibbed. He would turn off his mother’s lamp when he went to bed later.
‘Now it’s time for a game before supper. What would you like to play?’
‘Let’s play chess.’
‘All right then. Why don’t you set out the pieces while I put dinner in the oven? I’ll be back in a minute.’
‘Do you want to be white or black?’
‘You choose, Geordie.’
‘I’ll be black. I’ll be the black knight.’
‘Then I’ll be the white queen. I’ll be back in a moment.’
The French ormulu clock ticked on the mantelpiece as they played.
‘Can you feel a draught?’
‘A little bit.’
‘Are you sure you closed all the curtains and doors?’ she asked.
‘Yes, but I’ll go upstairs and take another look after I’ve played. CHECK MATE Aunt Winnie, HA!’
‘You little monkey! You’ve got me fair and square! Why don’t you run upstairs and make sure everything’s shut while I try to get myself out of your trap.’
‘All right – no cheating though.’
‘No cheating. I promise.’
The hall and the staircase were dark. Odd, he thought he’d left the lights on earlier. Oh well. Sometimes he rushed through the house and turned switches off instead of on, or the other way round. He flicked on the switch at the foot of the stairs.
As he climbed he felt cold air cascading down the staircase. The lights were off on the upstairs landing. The doors were shut but he saw a light shining dimly just around the far corner of the corridor. He ran towards his mother’s room. The door was ajar and its light reflected on the wall opposite. A breeze came from the room.
‘Mum? Is that you?’ His squeaky voice was at the same time hopeful but frightened.
Geordie then saw the leg. It was jammed in the door. The air was sucked out of him. He was paralyzed with terror for an instant before letting out a mighty scream. He ran back along the landing and vaulted into the arms of his alarmed great aunt, who was stepping briskly up the stairs to investigate.
‘What on earth was that all about?’
‘M . . . Mum’s room. There’s a body.’
‘Don’t be silly. Let’s go and have a look.’
‘NO. We have to call the police. Now. Something terrible’s up there’. She looked momentarily frightened by the tone of his voice. She had not seen him like this before.
‘Why don’t you tell me exactly what you saw, and I’ll decide if we need to call the police.’
‘I followed the cold draught and saw a light on in Mum’s room. I saw a leg stuck in the door. It was a body. It was cold in her room, like someone had come in and left the window open. He might still be there. We have to get out of the house. Please, Aunt Winnie.’
She reached quietly for the telephone at the bottom of the stairs and dialed 999. A pleasant voice answered, ‘Which Service, please?’
‘The Police, please.’
Within ten minutes a patrol car stopped outside the house. A policeman rang the doorbell. He was accompanied by a police woman.
‘I’m so glad you’re here. My nephew Geordie says a bedroom door was open upstairs and there was a leg stuck in it.’
‘Have you seen it, madam?’
‘No. We didn’t feel safe going upstairs so I called you.’
‘You did the right thing.’
The policeman looked at his colleague sceptically, ‘Well, we’d better go up and take a look. You stay here while we investigate upstairs.’ He patted his truncheon and winked at the small boy.
Five minutes later they returned downstairs. The police woman seemed puzzled, ‘Where exactly did you see the leg? We looked at every door and in every room, but couldn’t find anything.’
‘It was there, I swear. It was stuck in the door of Mum’s room. There was a cold draught coming from upstairs. Even Aunt Winnie felt the draught, didn’t you?’ She nodded. ‘The door was open and a leg was stuck in the door. Let me show you.’
Geordie led the way upstairs, followed by the police woman. The door of his mother’s room was closed. They opened it and looked inside. The pink bedside lamp was on, as he’d left it. The curtains were sealed and matched as he’d left them. The police woman spoke to him in a kindly manner, ‘Never mind. Actually I’m rather glad there isn’t a body here, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. But there was a body, I promise.’
‘I think the emergency’s over, Geordie. You and your Aunt can get on with your supper now.’
As they walked downstairs Geordie overheard a few words Aunt Winnie was saying to the policeman ‘ . . . the coroner said she’d been lying there for a few days..’ He was taking notes. She went mute as soon as the boy reappeared.
The policeman interjected, ‘Well, young man, maybe you’ll be quite a detective when you grow up. Everything’s all right. We’d better be going back on patrol now. Don’t hesitate to call if there’s another problem. Good night.’
‘Good night.’ Geordie and his aunt stood at the front door as the sound of footsteps diminished down the path. Aunt Winnie laid her hands on Geordie’s shoulders from behind and, hoping he wouldn’t see her, began to cry.
‘What’s wrong, Aunt Winnie?’
She wiped the corner of an eye with her sleeve.
‘Silly me. Tomorrow when it’s bright and cheerful we’ll go for a walk in the sunshine and have a good talk, what do you think, Geordie?’
‘Yes, Aunt Winnie.’
As it happened it wasn’t bright and cheerful on the morrow. The sky offered only Edinburgh greyness from horizon to horizon. She was not in a mood to discuss the events of the previous evening, but they went for a long walk anyway. Geordie held her hand as they made their way along Causewayside, downwind from the biscuit factory. There was always a smell of peppermint and chocolate along that street. He loved it.
‘Aunt Winnie, what do you think I should be when I grow up?’
‘That’s up to you, Geordie. What do you want to be?’
‘A farmer.’
‘That’s a noble profession, but I think you’ve got more to contribute to the world than being a farmer.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re a visionary, Geordie. You have the unusual gift of seeing what other people can’t see.’
‘Like the goodness in politicians?’ He didn’t understand what he was talking about, but thought it sounded precocious.
‘You’ve been listening to too many news programmes.’ she chuckled loudly. ‘No. You have a gift for seeing solutions to problems sometimes that others can’t see. But you’ll have to careful because there are forces in the world lined up against you. They don’t want problems to be solved. They want chaos in the world.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Good and Evil, Geordie. It’s about Good and Evil.’ She replied firmly.
‘I still don’t understand what you mean, Aunt Winnie.’
‘You have a gift that needs to be nurtured. You’re a boy in a million and there are forces that will do anything to prevent you from growing up properly.’
Their walk took them through a narrow vennel by St Mary’s Cathedral. A powerful gust came out of nowhere and whisked the cap off Geordie’s head. It spiraled forty feet aloft and landed on a rain spout. Geordie roared with approval, ‘Look at that, Aunt Winnie. My cap’s on the gargoyle’s head. Doesn’t he look silly?’
He was surprised by her reaction to this amusing event. She shouted at the gargoyle. ‘Throw that cap back immediately. It’s not yours. Drop it now.’
The cap dislodged in the breeze and fluttered back to the floor of the cobbled alleyway. Geordie picked it up and fitted it back on his head firmly.
‘Geordie. I need to tell you a few things.’
He knew she had been steeling herself to talk all morning.
‘Yes, Aunt Winnie?’
‘I grew up in a family of three girls and one boy. The boy, your great uncle Will, was killed in the Great War. We all adored Will. You remind me very much of him. He was such a character, you wouldn’t believe the things he got up to.’
‘Like what?’
‘Oh, like stretching a rope from the top of the house to his den in an old lime tree and rigging up a wheeled contraption so he could escape along the rope to the lime tree before bedtime.’
‘Wow.’
‘Can you imagine how terrible it was when the telegram arrived on that lovely afternoon in June 1915, saying that Will had been killed in action? He was just nineteen. I remember that summer day as if it were yesterday. We were in the back garden playing tennis. The telegraph boy came around the side of the house. We hadn’t heard the bell. Jock barked at him. The boy looked desperately sorry to be there, staring at his feet. Mother sat on the grass and stared into space for an hour, holding the telegram in her hand. Things changed forever from that moment.
Mother always clung to the hope that he’d been taken prisoner. Four years later, when she heard the regiment was disembarking from Egypt she took the train to Greenock and stared at the face of every single soldier coming off the troop ship. She asked dozens of them if they’d seen Will. Nobody even remembered Will. All his comrades from the battalion in 1915 were dead. In four years eight thousand men passed through his battalion of six hundred soldiers. That gives you an idea of the slaughter that took place in the war.’
‘That must have been very sad.’
‘It was heartbreaking.’ She paused, ‘But it wasn’t the only sad thing. Each of us three sisters had sweethearts who went off to fight in the war. They were all killed on the Somme in 1916, one after the other.’
‘Where’s the Somme, Aunt Winnie?’
‘It was the most terrible battle in France. Hundreds of thousands of men died to keep Britain safe from the Germans.’
‘I see.’ replied Geordie solemnly, not comprehending exactly why hundreds of thousands of men needed to die to keep Britain safe from the Germans.
‘That’s why I never married.’ She reflected, ‘I wasn’t an ugly girl, you know.’
‘I know. I’ve seen your photograph on the piano, Aunt Winnie. You were a very pretty girl.’ Long-haired and beribboned like Alice in Wonderland, he’d often fancied. He wished he could have had a sister like her.
‘Well, after the war your Granny was very lucky. She met a wounded soldier on the hospital ship where she was a nurse and married him. That was your grandfather, a lovely, lovely man. Adelle, our other sister, moved in with me. I was a teacher in a small school in Northumberland and we stayed together until she died fifteen years ago.’
‘Where were you living then?’
‘We retired to the house I’m in now. That’s what I want to talk about, Geordie. I’d been away in Dorset visiting some friends for a fortnight. When I returned there was a strange feel about the house. The window boxes were untended, the curtains drawn. Our poor cat was mewing outside, as thin as a rake. I knew straight away something terrible had happened.’
‘What, Aunt Winnie?’ he squeezed her hand.
‘Your Aunt Adelle was found on the floor of your mum’s room, her leg in the door. Just like you saw last night.’
‘Was that Aunt Adelle I saw?’
‘I’m sure of it. At least, her spirit.’
Geordie gripped her arm. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It means that you are an exceptionally sensitive boy. She might have been trying to say something to you from the other side. She was a theosophist and she probably recognizes you as the one person in the family she can connect with.’
‘But she died before I was born, Aunt Winnie. What’s a theo . . . sophist?’
‘Someone who connects with the Other Side. Adelle used to say that a person never dies, that there’s a parallel universe of spirits running alongside our own. Sometimes our universes bump into each other but most of the time we live our lives completely ignorant about the world of spirits around us.’
‘Do they know we’re here?’
‘I’m sure they do. Maybe they’re as scared of us as we are of them’ she smiled. ‘Maybe there’s a small ghost boy telling his Auntie now that he just saw a Person.’ She shivered. Geordie laughed.
‘Are they watching us?’
‘It’s quite possible. You can tell when they send signals to us, like
Adelle, maybe, and your hat blowing onto the gargoyle.’
‘What are they trying to say?’
‘I don’t know exactly. But you may be someone they want to get in touch with. You look just like our brother Will. You have the same lovely sense of humour. Maybe you are your Uncle Will. Who knows? I wonder sometimes. He had The Sight too.’
‘The Sight?’
‘Yes, we come from an old Highland family, Geordie. There was always someone with the gift of Sight in our family. Will could see the other side as clearly as if they were walking in the street. So could Adelle, and our own Uncle Tam from the Black Isle. That’s perhaps why they’re trying to contact you.’
‘I think it’s all quite frightening, Aunt Winnie.’
‘You mustn’t be frightened. You have a wonderful gift that used to be highly regarded in the Highlands. There was the Brahan Seer and the Wizard of Gordonstoun. He built a completely circular building called The Round Square so that he could never be cornered by the Devil.’
‘So there is a devil?’
‘Do you remember the Bible story we read the other night? The young boy Samuel kept hearing his name called in the temple. He ran to the old man Eli, who he thought was calling his name. It happened three times. Eli then said that the next time he heard his name, he was to say, “Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth.” Well, God may be trying to say something to you, in which case you must be ready to listen.’
‘But what if it’s not God? What if it’s some other horrible spirit?’
‘Then you must always be ready to say what Jesus said, “Get thee behind me Satan.”
‘How can I tell?’
‘If it doesn’t feel right to you, that is what you must say. You will know, Geordie, believe me. God will never compromise you.’
Later she gave him a silver Coptic cross that had been in the family for generations, ‘Wear this. It will always protect you. Evil spirits hate the cross and everything it stands for.’ She slipped the chain over Geordie’s head.
Growing up, Geordie was a reasonably diligent Presbyterian. It was the framework in which he grew up, but he never went over the top. Periodically among his friends it was fashionable to be Born Again, but he remained aloof. He already straddled both worlds and had no need of rebirth, he thought.
Dark spirits tapped on Geordie’s shoulder over the years. There was the time in his twenties when furniture began falling about and he was chased out of his cottage one black Highland night. He never forgot the indescribable fear of stumbling blindly in the rain and heather in the dark. Maybe he had woken from a nightmare, but who gouged those claw marks into the stone fireplace, visible the next morning?
It was not always in the dead of night. He was sunbathing in a remote glen one summer afternoon after scaling a Munro with a friend, waiting to rendezvous with another climbing party. He and his friend sat up simultaneously. A wellspring of unspeakable terror filled their hearts and they bolted, panic-stricken, four miles out of the glen without looking back. They saw nothing, they heard nothing, but as real as the surrounding granite boulders, they felt something and ran like hell from it, whatever it was.
Manifestations were sometimes gentle and benign. Shortly after his son William was born Geordie was working late in his study. He heard Josie pacing up and down the landing outside the room, gentle footsteps, back and forth, back and forth. It was the soothing rhythm of a mother comforting a baby. The creaking of floor boards was pleasantly hypnotic. As he left for work the following morning he remarked, ‘You must be tired from all that pacing in the corridor last night.’
Josie looked blank. ‘I was in bed last night. I took a bath with William and we were asleep by ten o’clock.’
‘I see.’
That evening he told Josie about his conversation decades earlier with his Great Aunt Winnie. She listened patiently with the unspoken skepticism of a New World upbringing, ‘Have spirits ever manifested themselves to you?’
‘Sure. All the time.’ He replied in a matter-of-fact voice.
‘What about God? Has He revealed himself to you?’
‘All the time.’ He reflected, ‘But I’ve never let myself go. The signs are everywhere, always, for all to see. I’ve never made up my mind, once and for all, to pay attention and follow the calling. It’s a one-way street.’
‘What do you mean, a one way street?’ Josie was puzzled by Geordie’s certainty.
‘It’s hard to explain if you don’t know what I’m talking about. If I took that route I would need to give up everything. Absolutely everything. It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, and all that.’
‘Hmm. Sounds a bit far-fetched to me.’
Josie remained the hard headed pragmatist. Geordie regarded regular church-going as a sort of non-committal spiritual holding pattern, but she thought it was a good routine for busy people. When the subject of household ghosts came up, she always asserted,
‘There’s a scientific explanation. If a floorboard creaks at night it’s the humidity or temperature of the house changing, causing expansion or contraction of the structure.’
‘If you say so.’
One evening in May, all that changed. Susan arrived as the unexpected partner of a divorced dinner guest. The instant she walked through the door at Balnadarg she said excitedly, ‘Gee. This place is Spook Grand Central.’ Geordie and Josie laughed. It was the sort of comment they might expect from a Californian from Marin County when entering an Old House dating from the 1950’s. As the Bordeaux flowed through the meal it transpired that Susan was a professional channeler.
‘What’s that?’ Geordie asked, assuming that channeling had something to do with broadcasting or electronics.
‘I help people get in touch with the Other Side.’
She described how she was ‘Always able to see right into people and the dishonesty of their relationships.’
Geordie did not ask the obvious question.
Josie listened to their conversation with detached amusement.
‘Another ghost-chasing wacko with an overheated imagination’ she observed in the kitchen between courses. Geordie excused himself for a few minutes and went out to the garage. He shuffled through some tool cabinets and came up with a corroded piece of steel bent into a U shape. Back at the dinner table, he handed it casually to Susan.
‘What d’you make of this?’
Susan recoiled. ‘No. No. I don’t want to touch it.’
‘Go on. I’d be curious what you might see in this piece of metal’ He thrust it at her.
She reluctantly took the bent steel, holding one end in each hand. Her elbows rested on the table. The dinner party fell silent. She closed her eyes, trembling. Her face flushed; beads of sweat formed on her lip and forehead. In a weird voice, she pronounced, ‘I see death everywhere. I see terrible pain. I see men killing each other . . . Men in grey and men in brown . . . death is all around . . . no, no . . . ’ Just as she was working up to a pitch, Geordie pulled the metal away from her and she slowly descended from her trance.
Josie broke the silence: ‘Geordie, tell her what it was.’
‘This,’ said Geordie, ‘is a piece of steel reinforcing from the concrete off Fort Douaumont in the battlefield at Verdun. It was the scene of some of the most savage fighting between French and German soldiers in 1916. I took it as a souvenir when we were there last year.’
After dinner Geordie took Susan around the house, accompanied by some of the guests. In a matter-of-fact way she described what she saw in each room, ‘Someone famous slept in here.’ (an Allied general was billeted in that room in 1944), or ‘He’s not happy at all. He’s very worried about his children.’ (a young father had died unexpectedly in his sleep in that room ten years earlier). In the drawing room, she stood still and laughed. ‘Look, she’s opening the closet, admiring her clothes and running up the staircase with excitement. She’s a beautiful young woman, terribly excited. But she‘s so young.’ (that part of the house was built as a dowry on the marriage of the Laird to the daughter of a neighbouring baron in 1561).
Josie followed the tour silently. When Susan offered to prepare a ‘psychic map’ of the house over the next few days, Josie emphatically said, ‘Absolutely not. You’ve stirred up enough already.’ Geordie was pleased that she’d witnessed Susan’s observations.
It took the house a few months to settle down after Susan’s visit. There were creaks, bangs and inexplicable pockets of cold air. Josie heard faint voices on the wind that she mistook for Geordie’s. Objects went missing from one room and reappeared in another; a guest’s lost handbag was found months later, high on a curtain pelmet in a room they rarely used. A strong scent of jasmine wafted down the staircase at six o’clock some evenings. One morning all the dining room chairs faced out from the table. Footsteps crunched on the gravel outside. There was no gravel.
Geordie did his best to cover for these signs to preserve his wife’s peace of mind. ‘Yes, darling, I did call.’ or, ‘Yes, I did move the (half ton) china cabinet at three o’clock in the morning, because I wanted to see how it might look in the middle of the room.’ And so forth. Josie’s skepticism softened during these months. While not exactly admitting that she lived in a spiritually turbulent house, she agreed that there were lots of things she couldn’t explain.
One evening a year later Geordie was bathing William. The little boy splashed wildly in the water, squirting soapy water at his father out of rubber animals. Squeals of laughter rang through the top floor of the house. In the midst of the flurry of bubbles he fell silent and looked over Geordie’s shoulder towards the open bathroom door. A seraphic smile spread across the child’s face and he opened his arms, saying, ‘Hello, Lady!’
Geordie looked around, expecting to see Josie with a towel spread open, ready to receive the slippery little boy in her arms. Nobody was there.
‘Did you see Mummy?’
‘No. Look Daddy, it’s the Lovely Lady.’ Geordie looked again. Nobody.
‘Have you seen her before?’
‘Yes, Daddy, all the time.’ He waved at the door, ‘Goodbye Lady.’ William waved again and continued splashing in the bath, shouting with glee.
Geordie went through the usual horseplay and silly bedtime stories that evening, followed by the child’s prayer, ‘Jesus tender shepherd hear me . . . ’ which William loved so much, and which his own Great Aunt Winnie used to recite to him every night long ago. He sat on the bed holding William’s hand until it went limp with sleep, then tucked it under the blanket beside him. Planting a fat kiss on the sleeping child’s forehead, Geordie whispered, ‘I hope that you’ll use your Gift with more courage than I ever did, my little friend. Listen and go where the voice takes you. You’re destined for great things.’
Palenque
Geordie raked back his seat as the giant aircraft gained altitude, circled the airfield, wheeled over Lake Erie and set its compass south towards Texas.
His eyes closed and he mused on the recent past. He had not exactly enjoyed his summer job, but at least had escaped with three thousand dollars in cash and a fortune in adventures. Diana Ross enveloped him on the Music Channel and the prospect of a month traveling around Central America brought a thrill to his stomach. East Cleveland was fading behind him as fast as a vapour trail.
Dallas airport bustled with giant dudes wearing cowboy boots, brass belt buckles and broad rimmed hats. Where were they going? None to Mexico City, it turned out. The next flight was practically empty, stopping at a desert cattle station on the way. As the jet took off from Laredo Geordie began to think more clearly about what he was letting himself into.
The idea of Mexico was exotic and dangerous. He spoke no Spanish and apparently they hated Yankees there. How would they know he was British, not American? No more than he could distinguish between citizens of Oaxaca and Andalucia, presumably. It was idiotic for Anglos to explore Latin countries alone, his travel agent warned. To avoid further debate, Geordie lied to her that he was going to rendezvous with friends in Mexico City.
He cleared the customs hall and made his way outside the terminal to find a cab. The airport was hot and airless, scores of Mexicans milled about, hustling in the sweaty afternoon humidity. He spotted a tall, fair girl with a green rucksack, similarly mobbed. Geordie had the bizarre vision of a gazelle surrounded by baboons. He cut a path across to her.
‘Hi. Speak English?’
‘I am English.’ She replied tersely.
‘D’you want to share a taxi downtown? I’m going to the Hotel
Monte Carlo on Uruguay Avenue.’
‘I don’t know where I’m staying. I was told I would find a hotel agent here at the airport, but the booth is closed.’
‘Why don’t you come downtown and see what you can find from there? My hotel is fairly central.’
‘All right. It sounds better than trying to organize anything from here.’
Geordie turned to the surrounding throng of hustlers: ‘Taxi!’
‘Si, Senor. Where you go?’
‘Hotel Monte Carlo, Avenue Uruguay.’
‘Si Senor. No problem.’