Upperkirkgate Chapter One: That Wilfully Seeks Her Own Salvation, Part 1

“Your secret’s safe with me,” said Alison to Jack as they sat down at a table in a coffee shop. It also sold books on the street called Upperkirkgate, in the heart of Aberdeen. They shed coats like outer skins, wings left on the backs of chairs until they rose again.

  “Well, she hasn’t got our experience,” he said awkwardly, arranging his hands so they tried not to shake. She was efficient, arranging the salt and pepper and the tall slim menus. “Where is she?” he asked.

     “She’s coming soon. After class. It’s only what-you-call-it. Matriculation. Sounds like graduation, only backwards.” Jack leaned forwards. Alison did not move away. He was not looking at her, but out at the skyline, the passing traffic, the back of the old St Nicholas Kirk.

      “Warm for September,” he muttered. Alison looked over at the bookshelves facing her, counting them. “Here’s Claire,” said Jack. She was the muffin girl. She had an aura of enthusiasm for hard work ahead. Perhaps that was why she kept her sleeves rolled up, looking around her in an animated way. Alison glanced at her casually and gave a dry smile, like an aunt to a favourite niece. Jack hummed “Bright Eyes” to himself. He picked up his paper napkin and doodled on it, producing castles with eyes instead of windows.

     Claire only wanted a coffee. She sat with her back to the street, facing Jack, her coat shed in a moment. Now they were the circle, joined against the weather. They each wrote a paragraph on their napkins and passed them to their neighbour.

“A full-bodied text, characteristic of her early work,” said Jack, pulling his glasses halfway down his nose, “it leaps across boundaries, with only a hint of the promise that was to come.”

     Claire blushed slightly, and looked modest. Alison began to sneer instinctively, and made an effort to stop. Jack cleared his throat as they swapped again. He strained to read Alison’s verse with the thick lines she had drawn under the last words, then his face brightened. “A sustained and pointed attack on society,” he declared, “her customary satire as sharp as ever. Woe betide her earlier critics!” Alison looked unconvinced.

     “The point is,” she began, only to be interrupted by the arrival of the pre-ordered sandwiches. She slapped her coronation chicken onto her plate and was about to resume; only, Claire was admiring the paintings on display above the books. Jack had suspended further commentary in favour of his cheese and onion toastie.

     “How cold it is, how cold,” said Claire, looking at a deep blue painting of the North Sea and touching her new scarf at the back of her chair, like a token. Alison subsided and watched them both. Perhaps there were cracks already.

     Jack was anticipating, building up to something. Claire finished her coffee and checked her watch. It was small, polished, with sensual fingers. Dark gold, like her hair. Jack nearly stood up, but stopped at a look from Alison. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a class in forty minutes,” said Claire lightly. She stood up, twined her scarf around her neck in a neat gesture, shrugged into her jacket and drifted away. “I still think it looks cold,” she said in parting.

     Alison shook her head. “Quite warm, actually, almost an Indian summer.”

     “Yes,” said Jack vaguely, swallowing the last of his sandwich and watching Claire walk out of the bookshop and look both ways before crossing the road, arms folded as she reached the bus stop on the other side.

     “So what do you think of Emily Dickinson?” asked Alison, leaning forward, pensive. Jack was looking at the bus stop, trying to work out if he knew the person Claire was now talking to. The number 41 bus came and whooshed its doors open like a pent-up flood. Claire laughed at something the other student said as they boarded. Jack frowned. He drank the rest of his coffee. He did not seem very approachable. Alison looked at him, contemplatively. She relaxed and looked over his head at the drama section. “George Bernard Shaw,” she muttered. “Plays Unpleasant…” Jack did not seem to hear. With the final departure of Claire on the bus he seemed quite morose. “You’ll see her again tomorrow,” said Alison in an encouraging tone. “But it won’t be like today.”

     He seemed to notice her for the first time. “D’you reckon?”

     “Oh yes,” said Alison smoothly. “She likes the sun, unburnt toast and books with green spines.” A flicker crossed Jack’s face.

      “Of course, you know that friend of a friend… who lives on King Street. Next to her.”

     Alison brushed the crumbs from her red sweater a little self-consciously. “You have a talent, Jack,” she said assertively, “you know what the time is.” He looked at his watch, then at her, nonplussed. “You are the man who knows his way around. You… know.” Her last word was sibilant. His eyes still flickered towards the window and the bus stop. She leaned forwards again, her long dark hair falling across her face.

She swept it back. “How much do you know about her?”

     “I knew her at school,” he said awkwardly, staring out at the street. Another purple bus swept by, he followed it with his eyes.

     “I took another route,” said Alison, tapping into his flow of thought. “I thought I’d vary it on Thursdays. School… is such a poor preparation,” she said brightly. “So very… elementary.”

     “Yes, it was pretty basic,” he agreed, seeming intent on the traffic. “I got my Higher exams in a Further Education College instead.”

     “I know,” she said, “that’s what makes you different. You’ve been there, done things, you’re not just a school leaver.” He took proper note of her for the first time.

     “Oh, that,” he said. “I was just unfocussed… I couldn’t take those stupid exams seriously, couldn’t connect them with intelligent things, with university life. What has a close reading of a dog licence to do with Plato, for pity’s sake?” He gave a short bark of a laugh. “Unless maybe one connects it with the Phaedo…” He resumed his watching of the street.

     “Perhaps you couldn’t take them at all,” said Alison mildly. Jack waved a hand in her direction.

     “It was very… elementary, as you say,” he said in a bored voice.

     “Perhaps school wasn’t hard enough for you, Jack,” she said softly. He smiled. “I admire you for not giving up,” she continued. “For turning twenty-one in your first year at Aberdeen.” Her eyes glittered.

     “Claire is twenty,” he said blandly.

     Alison grew darker.

     “Twenty is wonderful,” she said with an effort. “You can afford late mornings then, less to worry about all round.” He had lapsed into thoughts on the street again. Alison leaned further forward, upset the salt, scowled, and replaced it. Jack was oblivious. “So what do you plan doing about her?” she said. He seemed to revive a little, and opened his mouth. “I think you should be decisive,” she said firmly. “Let her know where you stand. You can’t afford to hang about.” She looked almost angry for a moment, and then relaxed.

     “I-“ he said, then was cut off.

     “You could ask her to go bowling,” Alison began again. “Or for a coffee. Perhaps even here? No, too obvious, she’s been here already. “What about the beach?”

     “It’s a little on the cold side.” Alison sniffed.

     “Cold? She looked warm enough to me, that scarf was long enough. Her hair’s like the sand. You could tell her that. Romantic stuff.”

     “I don’t know…”

     “Yes, you do. Now, you need a methodical strategy. You say you know her already. How well does she know you? You’ll need more than school memories.”

     “There was that time I walked down the road with her to the bus.”

     “Ah, the bus. Source of magical mystery tours and lost change. Tell me, how often did you sit with her in said vehicle? Or in class?”

     “Well, I do like her,” he said vaguely. “I like the way she sits and reads and looks intellectual.” Alison smiled, and tore her napkin in half. Jack looked away from the street, up at the books on display. “George Bernard Shaw,” he read, twisting in his seat. “Plays Pleasant.”

     “So where do you want to go with this relationship?” Alison asked. He jerked to attention. She continued, “You will want to speak to her, hold her hand, no doubt kiss her. Which I’m sure would be very satisfying. I really want to help you with this,” she said earnestly, confidingly. “I’m your friend too. Do you remember that strike in our first year, when the lecturers all went on strike and half-wrecked Crombie? They should have seen that coming!” He seemed less interested now, sneaking a glance at his watch.

     “Some things are so profound,” she said quickly. “When two compatible people really share their interests, they’re an unstoppable force.” Jack nodded. “Some people just drift into things, others let fate take its course. Which reminds me… Freedom or determinism?”

     He considered. “I was a soft determinist in first year. Events are pre-ordained, but we have some power to affect their outcome.” Alison suddenly seemed younger, and failed to suppress a sudden giggle. Jack looked at her curiously. “What is it?”

     “No, it’s nothing,” she said, blushing a little.

     “What?” he said, taking his eyes off the street properly for the first time. She was animated, focussed, and full of a story.

     “I am not a number, I am a free woman,” she said, a glint in her eye. “Free.”

     “Oh yes. Very clever. Except there are so many random forces that shape us: our parents’ genes, the weather, the time the bus breaks down…” He started to turn his head back towards the street.

     She leaned across, tapped his shoulder and kissed his cheek as he turned back towards her. “Freedom,” said Alison, “is exhilarating,” and she looked it.

     He frowned. “So what you just did was to show we as a species are so inherently random, such unique individuals, that we act on the spur of the moment, without crediting consistency or stability?” He hardly seemed to have noticed her kiss, light as a feather.

     “We have known each other such a long time,” she said coyly.

     “Oh aye, since primary school. You went up to get some trophy in Assembly, though you weren’t in my class then.”

     Alison seemed indefatigable, light where she had been so dark, thunder turned to cumulus. She stood up, grating the chair on the floor. “C’mon, let’s have a browse.”

     Jack stared at the crumbs on his plate. “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…” Then his mood seemed to lighten with hers, and he rose up beside her. His back to the street, he did not see another purple bus alight, disgorging more students. Then he saw a reflection in the window and turned as the doors hissed shut. He thought he saw a girl dressed in blue resembling Claire, and made a step towards the door.

     Alison said lightly, “Jack, I want your opinion on these.” He turned to her again, pretending he had not seen the other girl. He sauntered over casually to a range of books she was pointing at. She looked at him with a conspiratorial grin. “Have you read all of them?”

     “Maybe a third,” he replied as he scanned the range of cheap paperbacks. He picked up John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps. “Continually in print since publication,” he quoted from the blurb. “I read Chapter Five in an anthology when I was ten. I always thought Hannay’s ideas at the end read like a list of which of the Ten Commandments he’d broken, you know- a liar and a thief, but not a murderer.”

     She nodded attentively. She had in her hands a copy of Pride and Prejudice. “Have you seen the new film? I wouldn’t have thought they’d bother with that. The BBC show was the best.”

     “She had to be,” said Alison. “They wanted advice, and they got it!” They laughed briefly and replaced the paperback novels. Jack was coming to life slowly, warming, seeming redder. Her shadow over him almost resembled a plough. Their clothes and appearance were different but their university scarves matched. They went up a short flight of stairs to the poetry section. “I like the atmosphere here,” whispered Alison. “Moody and… old.” He smiled. A man came down towards them, and Jack moved quickly out of his way. His hand brushed briefly against Alison’s, though he did not seem to notice. She cautiously reached out her hand, but he moved further away again after the man had passed. Jack stood gripping the wooden rail that gave an overview of the shop, down to the coffee section nearest the window, the early autumn leaves tumbling across the street. Right at the back of the shop it was recessed, wooden, Gothic, almost confessional. He looked up at the wooden arches holding books on WB Yeats and George Mackay Brown at a discount. 

     “I think this may be one of the oldest bookshops in town,” he said quietly. Alison looked doubtful, then smiled agreement.

     “I am sure Bishop Elphinstone commissioned it straight after the King’s College Chapel,” she said drily.

     “Will we go and ask his statue out on the lawn between classes?”

     “The one you can’t go near without being fined sixpence for walking on the grass?” she asked. “I do like the retro feel of that Forbidden sign.” He smiled crookedly.

     “I get hayfever anyway.”

     She looked concerned. “Of course.”

     “I used to have soya milk,” he continued, bending over to look at the poetry books. “They thought it might improve the sinuses to avoid dairy products for a season.”

     “What was it like?”

     “Ghastly,” he said. “I loved riding my bike. Helped me forget about it. Ah… Emily.” He picked up a hefty volume of Emily Dickinson’s Collected Poems. “Our favourite.” He studied the slightly severe face on the cover. “This was her only portrait.”

     “Taken at Mount Holyoke Seminary, where all her friends were more conventional. She stood out.”

     “But we wouldn’t have her any other way.” He made to kiss the picture of the poet, then realised the shop attendant at the till just down the steps was looking strangely at him. He replaced it with a theatrical sigh. “I only got into her work last year. I had just been to the dentist, and suddenly “After great pain a formal feeling comes” made perfect sense.” Alison laughed aloud. “No, it was something else. Something I’d lost. She helped put it back together for me.”

     “Is it better now? That situation?”

     “I’m working on it. Shakespeare… took me a long time to forget the school approach. I mean, analysing sources of Macbeth is so much 

better than the dreary drivel we had to listen to. In the source, both Banquo and Macbeth murder Duncan, then Banquo gets his comeuppance first. Will made him more sympathetic because he was meant to be an ancestor of Jimmy Stuart. All rubbish, of course.”

     “Political times,” she said. “When writers especially had to interpret goings-on, make up their own minds. It’s hard to be on the underground.”

     “It’s been said Marlowe was a spy,” he said, looking down towards the Drama section. “His death in a pub brawl was the original  JFK plot.”

     “Do you think some plots should be exposed?” she asked, playing with a coat button. “Plots in books, secrets in real life. What if it’s in the national interest to expose them?”

     “From Guy Fawkes to Basil Brush,” he said casually. “Boom, boom!”

     “To come back to free will,” she said slowly, leaning beside him on the wooden rail and surveying the lower part of the shop as he had done, “I still think we are free agents, though these environmental factors you mention can influence us. I can’t say I’m a morning person.”