Upperkirkgate Chapter 6: One That Was a Woman, Part 3

   “You really think so? That I’m some kind of sad echo of her life, trying to live it for her, that I’ve never gotten over her- passing? Well, I did that for me. I wasn’t trying to fulfil myself for her sake, I did it for me.” She got up, and walked slowly down the path. Jules also got up, and came with her.

     “Why did we come here?” he asked. “Helen’s not buried here either.”

     “You think I don’t know that? I need somewhere to think. Every year on this day is sort of special, thinking of her still being with me. Our first year- all-night parties, exams in the great hall, moaning to each other about the stress.”

     “I know. She was in my year.”

     “Well, I was in second year, and I stayed on campus. I had my reasons. In some ways, it was like having my first year all over again.”

     “I remember being late for one exam. It was in that old part of the university, you know, the one with the old arched wooden door.”

     “It creaks.”

     “It does. The last thing you want when you’re late for an exam. They all turned round, of course, when I was trying to shut the door quietly. More creaks.”

     “Ha ha. I like it.”

     “Well, you might not if it had been you.”

     “That’s what I mean.”

     “Never before in the history of psychology had Jung’s archetypes been written about so rapidly.”

     “I’m sure every first year student thinks that.”

     “I’m still thinking it in third year.”

     “Apparently.” They reached the gate to come back out of the graveyard, and began ambling up Holburn Street. Jules pointed to the bus stop. Alison shook her head.

     “I want to walk.”

     He looked at the sky. “Whatever you say.”

     They started walking up Holburn Street, coming to Jack’s flat before very long. Alison paused, looking at it. Jules looked uneasy. “Not to worry,” she said. “I know he’s not in.” Abruptly she stooped, and picked up some loose stones. “But we may as well make sure.”

     Jules grasped her hand. “That’s not the way.”

     “What is the way?” She let them fall to the ground. Long shadows were cast from the crackled sundial in the overgrown garden, towards the house. “It looks to me as if it’ll never be right again. Perhaps it should be demolished.”

     “How do you condemn time?”

     “Suspend it, maybe. Let all those telling shadows run back into the cracks that made them. Let them congeal in their fate.”

     “Like the fall of Rome.” Alison looked at the cleft between the XII and the I.

     “Sacked by the Goths. Though why the Romans thought of employing them…” She rested her left hand on it for a moment. The sun caught the light on the diamond, dazzling her for a moment. “Come on. Let’s get the bus.” Jules smiled as they walked over to the nearest bus stop. The number 2 arrived, one of the newer ones. Alison looked disappointed. “Double-deckers are an endangered species,” she said. The sky had turned leaden.

     “Where to?” said the driver.

     “Yes, indeed,” said Alison. “Where to?” She turned to Jules.

     “Union Street, as far as the Music Hall, please, mate,” said Jules, rummaging in his pocket and producing his student card. Alison made an “Oh” of surprise, and also produced her student card.

     “How did we forget before?” said Jules as they found a seat.

     “Tickets are part of the traditional bus experience. Especially when someone else is paying.” The bus drove smoothly up the road, without the jars of the older vehicle. It pulled up to Holburn Junction. “Oh, do look.” She got up, and pressed the button to get off.

     “But it isn’t our stop,” said Jules.

     “Call it a semi-colon, then. I’m getting off.” He shrugged, and followed her. Alison crossed the street, and examined a rather forlorn and derelict building. “Hard to believe this was once a library,” she said. “A friend of mine told me it was just full of books, one of those little branch libraries that fell victim to cutbacks. Another endangered species.”

     “Outdated by the internet, I suppose.”

     “But isn’t it a pity?”

     “Computers are more efficient, I suppose. Why pay someone for something you can do yourself?”

     “My cousin might have words with you about that.”

     “Yes, I heard he’s better. Looking for other jobs now.”

     “He deserved better, I must say. I sat on these steps for a whole last year… not sure if I noticed it was shut down then. Maybe they’ll demolish it. It could be a listed building.”

     “Claire told me about Andrew Carnegie.”

     “She would. Another of her heroes, I suppose.”

     “You were just saying…”

     “Oh, come on. I don’t like the sadness in that door, paint flaking, the way the windows are boarded up. Like it’s been blinded. It’s an unusual design. Maybe it’s bigger on the inside.” They drifted slowly down the street, past Holburn Junction, onto Union Street. She stopped. “Let’s have a coffee.”

     “Just out of interest, how long can you go without that stuff?” They passed an old cinema refurbished as a nightclub, into a large chemist’s. Alison walked past rows of cotton wool, toothpaste and Vitamin C pills, down some stairs at the back of the shop. She sat down at a table in the corner.

     “You’re buying.” Jules produced and paid for two lattes, and brought them over. “Jules. Why are you still here?”

     “That sounds too deep to answer in a place like this.”

     “It’s because we’re in a place like this. Why are you still with me?”

     “You’re Jack’s friend. Or you were.” He took a sip, and nearly burnt himself. “Ouch.”

     “But you didn’t know me before today.”

     “Jack is nearly as accomplished in the art of projection as you are.”

     “With you as the director, who could fail?”

     “Ah. I think I’m more of a… conduit, will we say.”

     “We will not. If I had a tuning fork, you might sound a hollow note.”

     “Fans of my shows might say otherwise.”

     “Therein lies the rub. A man might show and show, and still be a devious coward.”

     “Okay.”

     “Some might be seriously annoyed by now. But you, you fancy yourself as a smooth operator, a veneer that can’t be scratched.”

     “Maybe they haven’t got the right tools.”

     She grasped her mug. The ring chinked against it. “Perhaps I have.”

     “Don’t even think about scratching me with that. I saw what you did to Claire.”

     “So you were there. How long were you skulking upstairs? And how could I help it, if she got in the way?”

     Jules was still relaxed. He stretched as he sat back in his seat, against the wall. “You seem to be the eternal third party. At right angles to events. It’s just a piece of advice, but you need to get a life.”

     “This from the man who does “field work” on his fellow band members, and writes up his research on the back of his cigarette packets? Oh yes, Jack told me.”

     “When you’re in the field, you have to observe empirical conditions, be ready to follow them through, record evidence as it happens.”

     “How rational. Just because my thesis is on the insight of a man who died 140 years ago, doesn’t make it any less valid.”

     “Why the dickens would it?”

     “People change, and they stay the same.”

     “I’ll let you know when there are vacancies in my department.”

     “Yes. You do that. Somewhere without strings attached.” She stirred her coffee, growing cold. She drank it listlessly, her energy drained. “I’m sorry to think of Pirrips closing,” she said. “It’s got an atmosphere. A good site too, near the university.”

     “I prefer the pub.”

     “You’re such a philistine. How can beer compare with literature?”

     “Depends on the company.”

     “Ready-made headcases?”

     “Associative therapy.”

     “That could mean anything.”

     “Don’t it just.”

     “Thanks for the coffee.” Alison rose from the table and drifted gracefully away. Jules watched her go. She did not turn around. Perhaps he expected her to. She went slowly up the stairs, head bowed, as if thinking hard. He watched her ascend out of sight, and finished his coffee.

     Alison walked out through the shop, looking neither to left or right. The sky outside was heavy, but still dry. She crossed the road and entered a supermarket. She ignored the doughnuts and Danish pastries placed prominently near the entrance, and went straight to the fruit section. She was examining some grapefruit, when she felt a nudge on the elbow. “Alison!” She looked up.

     “Hi, Ellie. How are you doing?”

     “Didn’t expect to see you here. How’s Jack?”

     “You know. Still hiding.”

     “Yes, one of those. Can’t face up to the truth.”

     “Tell me about it.” Alison put the grapefruit back.

     “I don’t know how you can eat those things-“ Ellie began before she saw the ring. “Oh, my-“

     Alison smiled. “Yes, I do admire the citrus family. If I weren’t already related to them, I’d apply to be a member.”

     “But-“

     “I’ve got something to do. See you.” She left her abruptly, still open-mouthed. Alison left the supermarket, crossing the road again, heading determinedly in one direction. She walked over to the Trinity Shopping Centre. The sun had gone in behind a cloud, and a light rain started to fall. Alison considered shaking out her small red umbrella, then thought better of it. She was inside the Centre in a moment.

     She walked through the Centre, past shops with bright lights and sounds that seemed increasingly alien to her, down the long flight of steps at the back, towards the train station. “Going down,” she said quietly. The distant hum of a departing train could be heard.

     Alison kept walking, down the shorter flight of steps to one side of the Centre, into the back of the train station. The rain drummed lightly on the opaque roof. Here and there it was broken, and the water spilled through in puddles. She avoided them, and the pigeons strutting underfoot. They hopped and chirruped, potential messengers in confusion. One looked up at her, head to one side. She smiled and walked on. The surge of people around here grew thicker. Commuters in pinstriped suits were heading out to Dyce, the next station to the north, checking their watches. Alison drifted with the crowd.

     She arrived at the steps up to the bridge, left the tide of commuters and walked up, resting her hand on the rail to the side. She came to the top, stepping onto the bridge over the track, and looked down over the criss-cross girders, at the crowd, the trains now waiting to depart.

     “Step out from the crowd. I expected nothing less of you.” She turned.

     “Jules! How did you get here?”

     “Same as you. I used my legs.” He leaned on the bridge girders beside her, whistling softly. A guard below whistled rather more loudly, and waved the train off. The diesel engine pulled out, and started heading south. “Where do you think it’s heading?”

     “South.”

     “To Edinburgh or Glasgow?”

     “I like the coastal route to Dundee. Takes you so near the edge, the sheer drop down to the sea, those foamy breakers straight below. Tossing like restless things.”

     “Have you considered being a writer?”

     “I have tried.”

     “Death comes to all… that, and taxes.”

     “At what rate of interest?”

     “Depends what you put into your life.”

     “So when you die, you withdraw what you’ve saved?”

     “Maybe that’s what funerals are for.”

     “You’re cheerful.”

     “Call it part of my training. Expect the worst.”

     “For someone in the business of putting people at their ease, you’re not very tactful.”

     Jules smiled. “All eventualities are possible. What do you choose to do with your life?”

     “That’s too broad a brushstroke. I like to focus on more immediate detail. What am I going to do next term? Graduate first, I suppose.”

     “Do you think you did well enough?”

     “How would I know? I just handed in my thesis today. It’s the end of an era. It leaves me free for… other things. Life, happiness and the pursuit of liberty.”

     “That’s been said before.”

     “I know.”

     “Now who’s being a smart-alec?”

     “Not me. I know what I can do, and I do it. It’s better than having vague dreams that’ll never be realised.”

     “Maybe you need someone to realise it with you.”

     “Very telling. And I thought you were so detached. You’ve got a funny way of chatting me up.”

     “Is that what you call it?”

     “I told you- I hate questions being answered with questions.”

     “Was that a question?”

     “Grrr.” She looked over the rail, at the south side, then crossed over to the north. “Do you want a coffee, then?”

     “No. I think people-watching is a far more productive sport.”

     “Would you call that a blood sport?”

     “Occasionally.” He pulled out a cigarette, and made to light it. She pointed at the No Smoking sign beside them on the bridge. He smiled, held it for a moment, unlit. Then he shrugged and replaced it in his pocket.

     “Jules. You’re such a dinosaur.”

     “How?” She laughed.

     “How did  someone like you ever get addicted to fags?”

     “It was something to do. I got bored in between assignments. Then my girlfriend left.”

     “Was that Claire?” He said nothing. They watched the people milling around the platform for the northern line. “It’s getting colder.”

     “The light is still with us.” Alison did up the zip on her jacket. “It’s just past midsummer. The time of year when things reach their height, a time when things will never be as great again, no matter how much you want them, or try to call them back.”

     “Who’s pessimistic?”

     “I’m talking about experience. And life. The year changes, the time it gives us, the light, it has such potential… and what do we do with it?”

     “Make it our own,” he said softly.

     “Oh, your dialogue. Monologue. With language like that, you’re more likely to be pushed than pull.”

     “What makes you think I’m trying to?”

     “Questions, questions. ‘Rage, rage, against the dying of the light…’ I wish there was some way to mark this day, to set it apart like a birthday.”