Upperkirkgate Chapter Four: The Houses That He Makes Last Till Doomsday, Part 3

“Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,” he said drily. The Chapel was deserted but for the two of them. Some orders of service lay damp and torn on the ground. “Well, Jack, you didn’t have to come into the campus on a Saturday. Though considering your recent progress, perhaps you did. But I would hardly have expected you to come here.”

   “I was thinking of eternity,” said Jack suddenly. His tutor stared. “I, I mean, I don’t mean like in a funeral, things that you can’t change. Even, even marriages don’t last now. But they do sometimes.”

     “Indeed.” Dr Carmichael leaned against the choir stalls, and folded his arms. “Am I to understand your… personal problems are the reason for the surprising dip in your previously consistent work?” Jack nodded. Dr Carmichael stared past him, up at the pulpit. “I was in Harvard… a long time ago. The leaves were wonderful.”

     Jack tried to relax. “The leaves? You don’t look as if it was a long time ago, sir.”

     “Don’t call me “sir”. Only toadies do that. That autumn had its distractions.” The Chapel seemed to grow darker and colder.

     Jack leaned against the chocolate-coloured wood of the choir stalls from his end, looked up to where the large crucifix had been before the Reformation. A ray of late sun filtered through a stained glass window, like a pointing finger of blood. “I enjoyed your lectures so much at the Summer School, three years ago. All those piles of books on a table… like a feast for the head. You inspired me. James Joyce‘s Dubliners, Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles; I never knew reading could be so much fun. And Shakespeare’s Othello.”

     “’Beware the green-eyed monster’. My first marriage was here, six years ago.” The light was failing, fast. There were large candles to one side, lit in winter services like that just past. “She had a glow about her,” said Dr Carmichael softly. “She stood- just there. Not all the plane tickets, bouquets, promises, gold rings in the world shall medicine thee to that sweet sleep which thou owed’st yesterday… none of it can build a marriage, if there isn’t-“ he stopped. The fading light appeared to show blood on his face. “Tomorrow,” he said, moving away, turning his back in the pulpit. “And tomorrow.” He moved almost to the door. “And tomorrow.” He opened the door. A sharp gust of wind came in. He walked out.

     Jack shivered. Denim was not a winter warm material. He had known that for years, but still had difficulty prioritising his clothes first thing in the morning. He rested on the narrow pew for a moment. Dr Carmichael had not quite shut the door properly, and it yawned open, letting in the cold. Jack looked up at the window. What would it be like, to stand here and swear fidelity to Claire? He got up, and closed the door. He saw the light switch, but preferred the atmosphere of the near-dark.

     “The bright day is done, and we are for the dark,” he said aloud. The Chapel had good acoustics. He wandered over to a window. It showed a scene of loaves and fishes. Jesus’ hands outstretched. The hungry being fed. What Claire believed. He sat down again on a pew, looked up at the ceiling. Decorated bosses, a rare medieval survival. The Chapel, like the university, had its roots in Bishop Elphinstone, a tutor of King James V.

     He thought he heard something move. He got up, moved towards the door. Only a dim light now came through the windows. “Hallo? Is anyone there?” He walked into the vestibule, thinking he heard the door leading to the bell tower rattle for a moment, as if someone were locked in on the other side. Only the wind. He pulled open the heavier front door. A few orders of service from the funeral still lay sodden on the ground. They lifted in the wind, around his feet.

     Jack left the Chapel, closing the door behind him. It was solid oak, with metal studs. Solid, reliable. It was easy to lose track of time in the shadow of such striking, surviving late-medieval buildings. “I like the way they just leave it open,” Jules had said once. Jack stood for a moment, the rain falling gently, agent of the cold. He shook himself like a dog, and headed for the High Street. The cold and the cobbles would soon give way to a hot bath and food.

     Jack walked away from the Chapel, but kept looking back. He thought he saw a granite statue follow him once: again, mistaken. The dead weight of an inescapable promise, something apparently inevitable, pressed on him. He walked past the Taylor Building, up the High Street. He waited for the number 20 bus in the shelter. Consulting the timetable, he found there was one due in twenty minutes. They were less frequent late on Saturday afternoons. He wished there was someone there to talk to. He thought of stained glass and statues. It was not long till his face was lit by the warming lights of the bus.

                                                           ***

The ice formed a sparkling rim over the pond at the Duthie Park. Jack shielded his eyes for a moment from the reflected brilliance. He sucked in his breath for a moment, managed to tie three of the buttons on his denim jacket. He felt only marginally warmer than the day before. His university scarf hung round his neck, black and sombre. His breath fogged out in a cloud.

     He saw a woman in blue climb the hill, past the swings. He wondered if she might be Claire. He had had no contact with her for what seemed like ages. For him, too long. The loss of her, like withdrawal from drugs. He had to know if this was her. He followed her from a distance, waiting for her to turn round. She did not. He climbed the slope, looked out on the great flat area of the park. The bandstand with its air of distant summers departed stood in the middle of the green, frosted expanse. She kept walking, arms folded, head bent low. She seemed determined, with a purpose. He walked up to the bandstand, an island in the sea of frozen, crackling green. It was mid morning. The sound of church bells came pealing from the direction towards the town. He leaned on the wrought-iron rails, wincing at the cold on his hands.

     “That isn’t Claire.” Jack started. Jules was behind him, lighting a cigarette with a brisk movement, the familiar red glow in his mouth like a stop sign.

     “How- Where did you-“

     “Lovely morning.” The blonde woman was out of sight now. Jules leaned beside him, his jacket sleeves covering the cold iron. “They ripped this down for the war effort. Restored about twenty years ago. Sort of retro-Victorian.”

     “I can tell you’ve had a good teacher.”

     “I’m a quick study. I can just see the band here in summer, raking in the crowds.”

     “Lots of opportunity for research, too.”

     “Don’t remind me of the real world, please. I’ve fooled myself into thinking I’m on holiday.” Jack noticed again the persistent ringing of bells from further up Holburn Street, in the direction of his flat.

     “Did you ever go to church with Claire, when you went out with her?”

     “Were you thinking of going?”

     “What was it like?”

     A puff of smoke drifted past him in a nonchalant manner. Time drifted with it. “I didn’t go back,” said Jules eventually. Jack exhaled.

     “That makes me feel better. I’ve just got to undo one of these jacket buttons.”

     “Too many doughnuts. I know you.”

     “Oh, it’s just stress. It’s been scientifically proven stress leads to doughnuts.” Jules looked out over the park, towards the Bridge of Dee. “I just thought- I might catch her for a word… I think she’s been avoiding me. Organised religion… it seems so Victorian.”

     “She means what she says. She believes it.”

     “You’re the one who didn’t go back.”

     “Perhaps you’re the one to go forward.”

     “Ha. I hope so. The progressive party…”

     “Ask her about trains.”

     “Claire?”

     “Aye. Give her a steam engine and a third class carriage, and she really comes to life. Enthuses about experiencing working-class comradeship in the nineteenth century, sharing the common load.”

     “You cannot be serious?”

     “Aye, she keeps all the old editions of Thomas the Tank Engine books in her flat.”

     “I always said you were the Thin Controller.”

     “Not likely.”

     “Compared to me, you are.” Jack looked in the same direction as Jules. He shaded his eyes against the piercing sun, already moving to its zenith in the short day. The church bells were silent. He could see where his footprints had been when following the blonde woman. He could see none for Jules. He turned around to see his cousin had gone.

     Jack shook his head. No sign of Jules’ footprints on the grass. Like a winter mirage. Perhaps he was in a waking dream. Jack shook his head again, lightly slapping his cheeks. He saw a recently-extinguished cigarette butt ground into the floor of the bandstand. “So you were here,” he said aloud. The park was very quiet. Jack stuffed his hands in his pockets and wandered over towards the Winter Gardens. It would be an economical sort of place to take Claire, just for a change. If she ever spoke to him again. If she happened to like large and potentially aggressive plants. He approached the series of large greenhouses. There were shadows of enormous cacti, from the Arizona desert. He made a mental note to ask Claire about the Victorian trains. He went nearer. A sign said the place was closed. The sand inside an echo of warmer climates, a promise of better prospects, somewhere they could escape to together. He used to like the carnivorous plants.

     Jack smiled at the memory of carrying a Superman flask and Darth Vader lunchbox, with tuna sandwiches, at the age of five, on his first visit here on a school trip. He had been worried about the sandwiches, but they stayed fresh. The park as a whole held many memories.

     He wandered over in a diagonal line, past the bandstand, towards the smaller pond that had paddle boats like water dodgems for kids in summer. A stone bridge arched over the water. Ducks quacked among the stiff rushes. He walked onto the bridge, surveyed the pond below. It was calm. The sun was now a little past its meridian. He had been at least two hours in the park.

     He switched on his MP3 of Springsteen’s Nebraska. The doleful sound of the perspective of a prisoner on Death Row filled his ears as he walked down beside the pond, slipping a little on the hard earth. The bridge towered above him now as he looked up at it. Shading his eyes from the sun, he thought he saw a woman toss her head, in a scornful manner, as if declining an offer from a man, pulling away from him as he held out his arms to her. “Hey!” Jack called. “Leave her alone!” Sunlight cast silhouettes, black and gold. He looked again, and could not be sure he saw anything. Trees and shadows a fluid art: the rest was silence. For a minute, he thought of the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. Proposing to Claire in a gondola as they went under the bridge. Then he lost the ring in the water, dropped it, time went rolling by. How much did those things cost?

     Jack squinted up at the bridge again. It was a clear winter day.  The water flowed gently under the stone arch. The earth bank to either side was steep, sloping down. Jack went under the bridge, studied the stonework. Teenage graffiti was sprawled across one side. He smiled. Perhaps they fell in before reaching the other side. He leaned against the wall, concealed from above. “To be or not to be,” he muttered aloud, “that is the question.” There was a slight echo to his words.

     He came out from under the other side of the bridge, resolved. The indecision had been the worst thing. He remembered taking an evening class in Higher German, and resolving to call a girl he knew between the lesson on a  postman’s round, and the weather. “Heute est ist ganz kalt.” Today it was. He walked back up to the bridge.

     “You do choose your moments.”

     “How-“ Jules was standing beside him, as if he’d never been away.

     “I guess you were never in the Boy Scouts.” He gestured over towards the Winter Gardens. “I was over there for a bit.”

     “Were you? I thought I saw a woman up here, shaking her head, and a man sort of coming onto her- holding out his arms, like this. She was backing away.”

     “Maybe time is relative. Maybe you were projecting things.”

     “When I looked again, there was nobody there.”

     “You’re still thinking about Claire.”

     “Do I ever stop?”

     “There are other things in life. Guitars. A quick fag. The memory of Bob Dylan on vinyl.”

     “You’ve still got your copy of Blonde on Blonde?”

     “Yes. With enough snap, crackle and pop to make a healthy alternative to any cereal.”

     “I don’t get it… CDs are so much better.”

     “But not the original format. You get so much more of the atmosphere.”

     “I don’t know about that… the Winter Gardens aren’t open this time of year, are they?”

     “I don’t think so. I was just looking.”

     “Window shopping for cacti… now there’s an idea. Brings a whole new meaning to “you can look but you better not touch.”

     “Ha, ha. My stomach tells me it’s past lunchtime.”

     “I guess so. Will we make a move?” They wandered over the bridge, started heading back to Holburn Street. They passed out of the gates, marked “Ambulance Only”. They progressed up the first part of Holburn Street, before Jack stopped, and pointed over at a new block of expensive flats. “That’s where I retook my Highers- and passed. I was happier there in one year than I’d ever been in six years of secondary school. There were no sports facilities (just as well), no extracurricular clubs to speak of. Just a slightly run-down former college of commerce that made a difference.”

     “All I’ve got is a red guitar, three chords and the truth.”

     “Yes, something like that. It was a shock to see it being demolished. Something to do with asbestos, I heard.” The sun was behind them, casting long shadows after one o’clock. Jules stopped, suddenly.

     “Hi, Will.” The lead singer in his band glanced up at them. He was reading a newspaper in a rather studied pose, standing at the bus stop. “What are you doing in this neck of the woods?” said Jules.

     “Visiting a friend.”

     “Your last show was good,” said Jack.

     “Thanks.” Will looked at Jack for a moment. “I heard about Alison.”

     “What?” Jack was nonplussed. “I didn’t know you knew her.”

     “Since a while. She’s been a help with that thesis. Mind you, the way my career’s going, that won’t be an issue…” Jules raised an eyebrow.

     “Rationally, or empirically?”

     “I… well, she knows her stuff. Here’s my bus.” The no 1 bus glided up, and opened its doors.

     “Saved by the bell,” said Jules, following Will with an eagle eye as he boarded.

     “You don’t like him much?”

     “I’d lend you the DVD of The Commitments, but I know you’ve already got the soundtrack. Quite a promising fund of knowledge for my own field of work. Little does he know. Hey, hey.”

   “You’ve got an eye for detail.”

     “You need it, in this job.”

     “Which one?”

     "Good poiint."