Upperkirkgate Chapter 5: Vouch Him No More of His Purchases, Part 2

He walked over to the counter, hoping he had calmed her, wondering how she would react to his current thoughts. He frowned, and nearly forgot to pay for the coffee. He tried to think of her face breaking into a smile at his suggestion, their future together.

   The bookshop seemed unusually dark. The shadows cast further shadows, almost like candles. Jack looked up to the recessed Gothic arches of the poetry section, and smiled. He took the coffees over to their table. “Did I feature in any of those thoughts?” enquired Claire as she looked at him. “You seemed quite changeable.”

     He shrugged. “You could say a storm front gave way to brighter prospects. And yes, you did feature.”

     She regarded him shrewdly. “In the long or short term?” He smiled blandly.

     “Both.”

     “Some of those prisons were in a shocking state,” she said, staring past him up to the poetry section, “before Elizabeth Fry intervened. A principled woman.”

      “Like yourself.”

     “Maybe. It’s easy to say some things: more difficult to do them. I’m hardly Mother Theresa.”

     “Is that where you’d like to go to, India?”

     “I don’t know… some people have a calling to go somewhere specific. I’m still finding out what mine is, let alone where it is. Charity shops are great places…”

     “Would you like to go to one now?”

     “Maybe in a wee while. Anyway, I thought you had work to do?”

     “Work is ongoing,” he said evasively.

     “How’s Prince Hamlet?”

     “Oh, he’s still making up his mind…”

     “Whether Claudius can smile and smile and be a villain?” He looked surprised. “Oh, I’m not without some knowledge. I was Ophelia in a school version. ‘These are the greatest actors in the world…’”

     “For comedy, tragedy, history, pastoral-comedy-tragedy…”

     “The Hamlet in that production was called John… a popular guy at Perth Academy, anyway. I learned to drive near there, it’s part of the usual test route. A fierce brae for a hill start.” She finished her coffee. “I haven’t got a car yet, but the licence is worth having.”

     Jack got up, and looked at the biographies. “I hear the market for fiction in Scotland is tiny… whatever the reason. Not that many poetry publishers anyway, I wrote to a few.” He scribbled something on a napkin, and handed it to her. She nodded.

     “That’s generous. Let me.” She thought for a moment, then wrote something under his.

     “I like haiku, it’s called the poetry of the seasons,” said Jack softly, watching her write. She passed it back, and he smiled.

     “How is your work?” she asked. “Really?”

     “I’m seeing Dr Carmichael tomorrow.” He did not meet her eyes.

     “I hope it goes well for you, and you have some great ideas. Dr Carmichael did his PhD in Harvard, America, didn’t he?”

     “So I hear.” He could not stop looking at her, she was so kind. He hated even the thought of letting her down.

     “What’s wrong?” she said quietly. “Is it your work?”

     “Och no, it’s fine. I just… like so many things, it’s about potential. I keep thinking about my Masters.”

     “Leave that till next year, eh?”

     “Aye well, if I wasn’t thinking of that, I’d be thinking of a job, of all things… what to do with myself.”

     She smiled. “Just do the work in front of you, one bit at a time.”

     “Are you volunteering to be my teacher now?”

     “Not unless you want a detailed examination of the roots of Dr Barnardo’s.”

     “On that high-pitched note, I will leave you… back to the QML. The Quite Melodious Lotus.”

     “Or the Quietly Murmuring Left, especially on Floor 4. I don’t like the thought of a glass cube replacing it.”

     “Neither do I… probably after our time. A greenhouse, to turn the students into tomatoes. See ya.” He kissed her and left. Claire watched him turn left out of the shop, pleased at his return to work. She drank the rest of her coffee slowly.

     Jack went to Union Street by a very roundabout route. He walked to a jeweller’s shop on Union Bridge and stood gazing at some of the rings on display in the window, jingling the change in his pocket. Then he actually took out what he had, counted it, and sighed.

     He set off up Union Street towards Albyn Place, where his bank was located. He emerged from his branch half an hour later, looking pale and discouraged. Then he went to a newsagent at Holburn Junction, and emerged carrying a newspaper with a determined air. He sat on a bench and looked up the latest vacancies.

                                                           ***

“So, do you think you are going through with it?” Jules looked at Jack calmly, through the bottom of his pint glass. They were back in the on-campus pub they had been in just before Christmas.

     “I just know… I want the long-term to be settled. I once heard she likes unburnt toast, and books with green spines.” Jules looked out the window for a while.

     “That isn’t particularly true,” he said quietly. “No more than for anyone else. I mean, who likes burnt toast?”

     “Burning happens by degrees. A friend of mine in first year…”

     “Perhaps Alison invented the green spines thing to make fun of Claire’s feeling for the environment.”

     “Aye, Claire’s good for the environment, in more ways than one…”

     “She makes you smile when you don’t feel like it.”

     “Yes, she’s bright and cheery and with it, she just lights up the room… How’s your band?”

     “Musically or academically?”

     “Both.”

     “Ah well, they’re going through a phase of conductivity, receptive to an altered environment under controlled conditions.”

     “Says you, the Thin Controller.”

     “Maybe I am. How’s your work? Is Hamlet making palpable hits, or is the pearl not yet thine?”

     “Getting there. Saw Dr Carmichael today, he had a few things to say about deadlines.”

     “He would. Our sweat and calluses are their bread and butter.”

     Jack looked out of the window, onto the cobbled High Street. “’The play’s the thing…’ sorry I’ve no ideas for your lyrics just now, I’ve been a bit occupied.”

     “Don’t I know it.”

     “Why… did she take you over, too?”

     “Hardly. I was just a bit more balanced about it.”

     “Is that why she left you?” Jack was surprised at his own hostility.

     Jules was unreadable. “A mutual decision. These things happen.”

    “All very well for you,” hissed Jack, “with your band and your easygoing manner and your work you always cope with!” He slumped in his chair, and banged his head with his fists.  When he looked up, Jules was still there, sitting calmly.

     “Remember what I said about projection.”

     “I just want things to be consistent,” Jack moaned. “I wish Alison would leave us alone. Then perhaps I wouldn’t have to marry Claire.” He stopped himself.

     “Is this how you’re going to behave to her? Manipulate her, so you feel better at her expense? What kind of a life are you offering her?”

     “How should I know? Sorry, Jules.” His cousin got up for a moment. He returned with a blue drink.

     “Try this.”

     “It looks like antifreeze.”

     “Distilled from the best brakes this side of the Tour de France.”

     “Well, it’s not bad actually.”

     “Told you.”

     “Have you played any other shows yet?”

     “We’re doing the Lemon Tree again, around exam time. Anything to stimulate the nerves. Is that her?” He pointed over at a female student.

     Jack paused in mid-swallow. “Who?”

     “Alison.”

     “I don’t think so. She prefers the bookshop, when it comes to hunting.”

     “You, or bargains?”

     “Both.”

     “I thought I saw her here before.”

     “Not likely. Certainly not just now.”

     “Claire’s not really the occupying type,” said Jules mildly.

     “You’d be surprised.”

     “Maybe you will.”

     “Maybe I will. It seems completely unreal just now, the formality of it, making an

occasion of something meant to be private…”

     “Are you sure you want to get married?”

     “I think Claire does.”

     “And are you sure of that, or is that just an interpretation of her values?”

     “She’s so real. I love her.”

     “It’s been said before.”

     “By you?”

     “You’re her friend,” said Jules levelly. “You should know.”

     “Know what?”

     “Know what she wants.”

     “I thought… I mean, I know she likes being with me. She has her causes… I don’t mind tagging along with them. She likes her history… So do I. Reasons for being in the present.”

     “What about the future?”

     “A book yet to be written… I want to share it with her.”

     “Do you? Really?”

     “Yes. Really.”

     “Well, there’s your answer.”

     “What can I do about Alison?”

     “What can you do for her?”

     “And why would I help her?”

     “She keeps asking.”

     “That would explain a lot… sooner you make your advice professional, the better.

Maybe you could combine it with your music.”

     “It has been tried.”

     “I mean, I did talk to Alison. Claire wanted me to, so I did. She bends everything into her version… I felt like a waxwork, she was just making a dummy, talking to a dummy, the real me wasn’t there. She wants a version of me she can’t have… the thought of being that Jack is scary. Someone who doesn’t make mistakes, someone who is partly me but just a shadow… someone who fades away at a sign of trouble, who doesn’t stick at things, someone who gives up, surrenders as prey to her… maybe I was that Jack for a while.”

     “Sometimes you have to explore an identity for a while before you know it’s not for you.”

     “I don’t like where that’s heading… like anything goes. I know where I want to go.”

     “A chilled perspective can help.”

     “If it was up to you, you’d never get out of the fridge, man…”

     “Have some more.”

     “I think I’m thawed out now… time to go. I’m on a mission.”

     “Watch your clutch control.”

     “I’ll think about it. See you.” Jack sauntered out onto the High Street, and awaited the number 20 bus. He got on the next one, smiled and leaned back in his seat. He felt optimistic. Claire was surely his, they would always be together. But he still needed to be sure.

     He got off the bus on Upperkirkgate, thought briefly of the bookshop, shook his

head. There was more important business first. He walked slowly, confidently, onto Union Street. He passed through the tide of people, half awake, up to Union Bridge, and a certain jeweller’s. He took a deep breath, on the edge of strange territory. He entered the shop, emerging half an hour later with a small black box, to his mind like one used on aeroplanes for flight recordings. He looked a little dazed.

     Jack turned and began to walk down Union Street. He felt distracted, then it gave way to a kind of joy, the tiny thing in his pocket sparkling like a secret firework, threatening to explode. What would she say? He clenched his fist inside his leather jacket pocket. Was this the right moment, today? It had to be. Was he dressed right? Perhaps scuffed jeans did not inspire romantic success. He had to know, it had to be now.

     Jack was moving steadily, almost semi-conscious, as if on an escalator, down towards Castlegate, and beyond it to King Street. Eventually he turned the corner and onto the street where Claire lived, and looked down its considerable length. Black boxes were flight recorders: they were sometimes used to analyse air crashes after the event. The last moments of the crew. Were these to be his last moments of being single? The long street seemed to glide by him as he made it to her flat. His flight was surely coming in to land, not crash.

     He leaned his head against the cool granite, closed his eyes. He opened them, saw the buzzer with her name beneath it, and those of her two flatmates. Jack licked his lips, wiped his palms. He raised a finger to press the buzzer, lowered it. He looked up at the windows, like big blank eyes empty of expression: he could see no-one. He pressed the buzzer with a trembling hand, almost as if casting a vote at an election.

     Nothing happened. He screwed his eyes shut, willing her voice to come out of the grille by the buzzer. He waited, pressed it again. Still nothing happened. What was the time? Time did not matter. It did to other people, otherwise engaged.

     Jack slumped into the doorway, leaned against it for support, stared across the street. If only she would come. He reached inside his pocket to feel the black box, recording this disaster. The shadows seemed to grow longer on the granite before he stirred again. He could wait longer still, but it would look foolish. She would not expect him. She might be with friends. He needed her.

     Jack wandered very slowly down King Street, towards the centre of town, away from this fiasco. No-one else knew how absurd he had been: no-one cared. He squeezed the little black box again, willing it to somehow record every impression he was feeling. He walked in slow motion.

     It was some time after the spring equinox, yet the late afternoon light seemed shallow, inconsequential. He passed the jeweller’s shop, and did not see it. He came 

to rest on the steps of the Music Hall, where he sat to contemplate the day, and the crowds.

     Whenever he saw a blonde woman who might conceivably be Claire, a part of him jerked, potentially galvanised into action. Then he stalled on realising it was not her. She would have better things to do: he knew in reality she would be in the QML. Studying, preparing material for her causes. That would be no fit venue for what he wanted to say to her.

     He had not realised he was standing up. The green man on the pelican crossing bleeped a general amnesty for pedestrians, and he rose up and went with the flow. Young women with prams, some hardly beyond school age: old people with zimmers, moving carefully while the green man cast a still glow on the junction where four roads met. Like the parting of the Red Sea. He reached the other side dryfoot, avoiding puddles. He must get the bus. An established routine: something that made sense in his jumbled world. He stared at the timetable by the nearest stop, almost without seeing it. It was not long till the familiar no 1 bus arrived, on the Red Line. He got onto it numbly, paid for a single.