Upperkirkgate Chapter One: That Wilfully Seeks Her Own Salvation, Part 2

“Neither am I,” he said with a brief glance at his watch. “We seem to have missed afternoon classes, not that we’ll be needing many this year.”

  “We can always educate ourselves,” she said brightly. “Do you think we’re brighter than we were before lunch?”

     “Most certainly,” he agreed. “With stimulating company, the time flies.” She sighed. “It’s a shame bookshops don’t do graduations,” he continued. “They’d never ever go out of business. Literature graduates beside the bestsellers. An impossible dream.”

     “Some dreams are achievable,” she said quietly, moving a little closer. They were hunched on the railing, two owls abroad in daylight. Her University of Aberdeen scarf hung lower down her shorter frame than his. She cleared her throat, hands beginning to sweat. She wrapped them in her scarf and closed her eyes briefly. Opening them, she said, “You know when Emily spoke of the Soul selecting her own Society,” she began, then laughed. “Oh, that sounds so stilted when I say it. Not elegant, as she wrote it.”

     “That’s alright,” he said softly.

     Alison smiled. “Well, I think I would like to ask you out.” He did not seem to hear. She started reciting the Dickinson poem “Because I could not stop for death” in her head, mouthing the words silently.

     “We’ve been down the pub before,” said Jack indifferently. Do you remember-“ She did not have the same advantage as before, their heights levelled by the table downstairs, but grabbed his scarf, pulled his head towards her and kissed him full on the lips. The shop assistant clucked and began to waddle out from behind the till, but Alison was blind. She held him for a few seconds, then let go. She enjoyed the sensation of his spit on her lips and stood, reluctant to wipe her mouth.

     She held the moment, the dark panelling, the other people watching them, the windy day out on the street, the way Jack still looked so surprised. “Come on!” she shouted, defiant of the hush inspired by books, and took him firmly by the hand.

                                                           ***                                                                    The shadows of the September sun lighted on the sign by the gate, telling of times of admission to the graveyard. It was hard to read in the full sun, as if time blended into the plaque and the stonework, as if it led the way to times open and shut, to life or death. In a certain light, Alison could seem attractive, sitting on a bench looking up apprehensively at the bulk of the St Nicholas Kirk above her.

     Jack leaned on one of the gravestones, as if for support, hands in pockets. “It hardly seems like an hour since you hauled me out here,” he said.

     “Your choice,” said Alison, succinct and obliging. “I was thinking more of the shops.”

     “Ah, there’s nowhere else so good for reciting our Emily,” he said, with an air of satisfaction.

     “So, is your dissertation on Shakespeare?” she asked. “Why not Emily?”

     “I thought about them both. Perhaps Emily should be left in peace, analytically…”

     She smiled. “Mine’s on language and communication in Dickens,” she said, looking at him brightly. “Especially, on how communication furthers the narrative in Great Expectations, Bleak House and… maybe A Tale of Two Cities.”

     Jack looked up at the church clock. It read just after five o’clock. “My masterpiece up to now was on Anthony and Cleopatra, analysing her death scene… but I like Hamlet best. All that lost potential…”

     Alison shaded her eyes and looked up at notices on either side of the back of the church. “Why does it say East Parish here, and West Parish there?” she asked. Jack squinted.

     “Historical admin,” he said briefly. “Two parishes united under one roof. It happens a lot with older churches.” She nodded. The wind blew softly through the graveyard. A golden leaf fell onto Alison’s head. She reached up and took it, turning it over in her hand.

     “Light as a bird’s wing,” she said. Jack stopped his leaning on the gravestone as an old woman came round the path from the front of the church. He came over and sat beside Alison.

     “Ah, you can see the veins in it,” he said, “just as the sap is fading… I like this, it’s a fading time of year altogether. Last chances, disappearing into the ground…”

     “From next week, they close the gate an hour earlier,” said Alison, looking round at it. “No more short-cuts after lectures.”

     Jack looked up at the clock, and the shadows cast by the hands, onto the granite. “That’s why the street’s called Upperkirkgate,” he said, looking over her shoulder as if checking a driving manoeuvre: the gate to the graveyard opened onto the street with their erstwhile bookshop. “It’s a funny trough of a street, really,” said Jack, musing. “You start with the Art Gallery on Schoolhill, then past our bookshop, down to the other shops, then you rise again, all your hopes with you, as you see Marischal… and the prospects of your life ahead of you.”

     “They don’t really use Marischal College now, do they,” said Alison, “except for graduations?”

     “Not for teaching, no, though my cousin is a doctor… he used to have classes there.”

     “The second-largest granite building in the world, and the largest, a Spanish cathedral, was built with Rubislaw granite anyway.” The shadows were lengthening. The clock was now covered in darkness. Alison put out a hand, carefully. “Jack,” she said, “I wish you would go out with me.”

     “Well, we are not confined by a shop, bar or lecture theatre,” he said, getting up as she moved nearer, and rested his head on his arms, on a gravestone. “We are out… side. Do you think this is a more respectful pose?” She sighed. Jack studied her. She had such power. Her calm seemed deceptive. She turned her dark, shining eyes to him. She rose, and joined him beside the gravestone. He enjoyed her closeness for a moment, then felt guilty for a reason he could not define.

     He thought briefly of blonde hair as the sun came through the softly rustling trees. He moved away from Alison, who again reached out her arm for him, and squinted nearer at the old Kirk. “This side of the building’s different to the other,” he said. “East meets West…”

     Alison looked over at the shopping centre visible beyond the graveyard, then at Jack. Her mouth tightened. She examined a gravestone between her former bench and him. “This one passed away in March 1902… a cobbler…”

     The shadows cast by the Kirk were starting to cover Jack. The sun glinted briefly on his glasses before heading further west, to obscurity. “Good things of day do droop and drowse,” he said morbidly. Alison glanced up at him, smiled and moved on to the next stone. Her scarf trailed almost to the ground. She brushed her hair back to read it, bending a little.

     “Died of cholera,” she read, her brow cleft. “So did his wife, and their five children…” She fell silent. Now the shadows were beginning to obscure her. She stood up slowly, and touched the headstone briefly, as if in a sign of respect. Jack appeared unmoved in every sense.

     “I used to do rubbings of gravestones,” he said. Alison looked at him.

     “It’s time to go,” she said quietly. He shrugged, and let her steer him around to the front of the church, taking the path by the side. The large tombs of the former Lord Provosts lined the cemetery wall to the right, towards Back Wynd. Some late shoppers passed them, walking briskly. The front of the church faced onto Union Street. They walked through the front gate, and found a bus stop nearby. “Farewell to summer,” said Alison, looking behind her.

     Alison’s bus was not long in coming, and she took from him a quick kiss, which he did not respond to. She looked at him searchingly, and then got on, flashing her pre-paid season ticket at the driver. He waited briefly for Jack, who shook his head and stepped further back. As soon as the doors hissed shut he walked away, not bothering to wave to her. His lodgings lay on Holburn Street, but he chose to start walking the other way.

     Down towards the Castlegate, relishing and ignoring the bustling crowd around him. A bus passed him, its sign reading “Beach Esplanade”. He glanced at it and smiled. He kept on walking, down the long boulevards, eventually reaching the beach as the light was beginning to fade. He took deep breaths of the salty air, and began wandering down the walkway running above the beach. The tide was full in, slapping at the concrete below. He could just make out the sand beneath it. The wooden barriers stretched down to the sea, long fingers resistant to change, even as they were rotting already.

     Sand under water… Claire washing her hair, like the sand. He looked out at the oil rigs, their lights winking in the gloaming. This morning, he had been so sure of her. He had not perhaps come off well against Alison’s analysis, but he had been taken off guard. The tide ran up to the concrete bulwark, slapping a little spray near his face. He got some chips from a hot dog stand, and began to wander up the coast, scuffing at stones and thinking. The garish lights of the funfair lit up the skyline behind him.

     Jack thought of Bruce Springsteen’s video for Tunnel of Love, and smiled, looking down at his battered leather jacket. He walked as slowly as possible, binning the leftovers. A lighthouse caught his eye, reminding him of walks near it on Christmas Days past. He had loved the foghorn. He tried to think of a life with Claire. She had seemed like a thing of the sea: light and blue and cloudy, almost about to blow away. Alison. Alison was all about roots, dark and stubborn and determined. He smiled.

                                                           ***

“Pass me that book, Jack,” said Alison firmly, stretching as the mid-morning sun fell over their desk. Technically, it was two desks, but it seemed like one. Commentaries were stacked mostly on her side, in three piles.

     He passed the volume, studying the spine in passing. “Hermeneutics in Victorian England- hey, does Scotland get a look in?”

     “You know why,” she said primly on receiving it and opening it halfway through.

     “I’m not sure that I do, actually,” he said. She looked at her watch. He sighed theatrically.

     “Haven’t you got work to do?”

     “I don’t know… still thinking…”

     “That’s what we’re here for.”

     “Are we? You could argue universities aren’t real places, life is an illusion, and the milk’s gone off.”

     “All I know is, Biddy’s role in Great Expectations is more important than Pip thought it was,” she said in a sharp whisper. He tried to focus on Freudian symbolism in Hamlet, and gave up, staring out the window at the weakening sun, marking time for Alison. She scribbled frantically and muttered under her breath.

     “Like the hieroglyphics,” he said, “looks like the Egyptian Middle Kingdom period to me. Perhaps there’s a mummy buried underneath this pyramid,” and made to look under her books.

     Alison looked at him, and eventually smiled. “I can see it’s no good,” she said. “Early lunch, then.” She put on her coat, but he left his behind, not feeling the cold so much. They climbed down the stairs from Floor 3 of the Queen Mother Library, looking out at the sunshine. She made to hold his hand, but he already had his in his pockets.

     They nodded to some of their friends and acquaintances in passing. On reaching the ground floor, Alison stopped. “Oh, hang on a minute, I must talk to Ellie,” she said. She tapped the shoulder of a girl doing photocopying, and asked how she was doing. Jack subsided into the background, leaning against the wall, looking directly across the foyer into the room known as the Heavy Demand section. It contained the more frequently-used books and journals, on restricted access: some could not be removed from the room.

     He caught sight of a female blonde head arranging papers on a desk in the Heavy Demand section, clearly packing up. He felt a sudden interest, hoping she would look at him. She put the papers away in her bag, slung it on her shoulder, and left Heavy Demand, heading for the exit. He realised she was Claire, and almost hoped she would notice him.

     Claire walked by almost without seeing him. Producing her student card to swipe at the portal in front of the turnstile by the exit, she saw him for a moment. She smiled. He smiled back, and waved. She waved briefly, and left. He felt disappointed.

     Jack was able to breathe normally again, but he descended to a crushing nether world. “Who was that?” said Alison at his shoulder, rejoining him suddenly.

     “Oh, just a friend,” said Jack quickly. She looked at him.

     “You don’t have that many,” she said slowly.

     “I have plenty,” he said, walking briskly over to the turnstile and extending his card. The red light turned green and he came through. Alison followed. Hands in pockets, he sauntered out onto Meston Walk, heading for the High Street. Alison ran a couple of steps to catch him up. He was a little lost in thought.

     “Where to?” she said.

     “Shops,” he said, pointing ahead. She sighed. They crossed the road near the car park, and proceeded down a short cobbled lane. He had to take his hands out of his pockets, and again she tried to catch his hand, only to not quite reach. The tips of her fingers brushed against his, and he pulled further away.

     They emerged onto the High Street: Jack looked briefly up and down the street to get his bearings. Walking in the tunnel-like lane always did that to him: it was physically disorienting, almost like time travel. “Lunch, now… let’s head for Crombie.” He kept looking for something or someone else. They walked to the hall of residence in silence. 

They entered the vestibule, and walked over to the new restaurant. “Do you want to sit there?” he pointed.

     “I want-“

     “I remember. Coronation chicken. With mustard. And anchovies. And-“

     “And the queue’s growing,” she said. She watched him walk over, her eyes never leaving him in the ten minutes it took him to return. “There are so few of us left,” she said suddenly. “So few who made it to fourth year, it’s not an automatic process… they start with dropouts and those who can’t cope, they run out of money or time or extra jobs… we are an elite.”

     “A hit, a very palpable hit,” said Jack, attacking his baked potato in a manner worthy of Laertes.

     “I never told you about… Helen,” she continued, struggling to say the name for a moment. “She died suddenly in our third year. An old flatmate of mine.”

     “All our yesterdays-“

     “Shut up!” she said, beginning to snap. “I wish you’d make your mind up!”