And the Land Lay Still (14 page)

He nods. There is nothing he can say that won’t sound like whining
.
So he keeps his mouth shut.

‘And go and talk to Isobel,’ she says, ‘before she’s away too and you’re left with all
that
stuff unsaid. She’s your mother, for Christ’s sake.’

He breathes out heavily.

‘Sorry,’ she says.

‘It’s all right. Like you said, we’re way past that.’

‘Do you hate me?’

‘Don’t be absurd. What are a few home truths between old friends?’

‘That’s very generous of you.’

He says, ‘Now it’s my turn.’

§

Stupid. Cutting across the Meadows, not drunk but not sober either, he saw three guys coming in his direction and didn’t register that he might be in trouble until they were almost on him. He was heading home from a party he’d managed to gatecrash that same night, after leaving his mother with too much food in Doom. He’d snogged a lonely girl then abandoned her as some way of getting back at Isobel. Stupid. The three guys fanned out to cut off his escape routes. One was roaring, ‘There’s the cunt that stole ma fucking money!’ Another was shouting, ‘That’s a fucking poof!’ The third didn’t say anything, just steamed in, boots and fists going like a windmill. Mike tried to jink past off the path and on to the grass but the grass was wet and he slipped, went down on the ground and the three of them were on him and then in some mad silent-movie moment they all slipped and fell too, the four of them scrabbling to see who’d be back on his feet first and it wasn’t Mike and the boots came in. ‘Ya fucking poof ya fucking cunt try this up your fucking erse take this in your mooth.’ He curled up tight as he could trying to save his balls, hands over his head trying to save his head, feeling his fingers and elbows and shoulders and legs getting battered, Jesus they were going to break his fingers. Don’t kick my head, he was thinking, just don’t kick me in the head, and they were laughing, ‘This is what we fucking dae, poof, we fucking kill ye,’ and he thought, how do they know I’m a poof, then there was shouting from somewhere and they gave him another couple of kicks like they had horseshoes on and were away jeering into the night. And he lay there thinking, well I’m not dead anyway, and slowly, slowly uncurled himself and a group of students were there, lassies as well as guys, ‘Are ye all right, mate? Are ye all right?’ and somehow he got to his feet and his legs were jelly and he fell off them and stood up again and the girls said, ‘Oh my God!’ and he couldn’t see for blood and a couple of the guys helped him to the infirmary which handily was just a few minutes’ stagger, where they left him, thank you, thank you, to sit
with the other walking wounded in A&E, the drunk and bloody battalion of victims of a Saturday night in Edinburgh.

A nurse cleaned him up and bandaged his bruised hands and put a patch over one swollen eye, and a doctor put a few stitches in his head and said he was lucky. ‘Lucky?’ he said. A policeman who seemed to be on permanent statement-taking duty and who must have been getting cramp in his fingers took one from Mike that wasn’t going to lead to anything unless he lost the eye, in which case, the officer said, he could claim criminal-injury compensation, and between times Mike sat in a dwam and thought, well, I had a choice. I could have betrayed myself and had a quiet night in Doom with Isobel and Bob Syme or I could have done what I did. And I did what I did, and that was the right choice, but there’s a price, Michael Pendreich, for being gay in this country, and you just paid it. Even if the bastards who did this to you didn’t care if you were gay or straight, a Hearts fan or a Hibs fan, a Proddy, a Tim or an art student, they gave you a doing for being available, and in a way they were just putting into actions what your mother couldn’t put into words. Then the hospital people gave him some extra dressings and let him go home, and he limped down the road to Tollcross and crawled into his bed.

When he got up late on Sunday afternoon he could hardly move. Eric was watching the telly when he edged into the front room. ‘Bloody hell, Mike,’ he said, ‘what happened to you?’ So he told him, and he told him everything, because up until that point, in spite of what he’d said to Isobel, he’d not been up front and honest about his sexuality, it was still only 1974 after all. And Eric said, ‘Well, what if you are gay? Who gives a damn except ignorant bigots?’ ‘You mean you don’t?’ ‘Of course I don’t,’ Eric said, and then, being a medic, he took charge. He changed the dressing on Mike’s eye and checked the cuts and bruises elsewhere and said, ‘You’ll live,’ and although Mike suspected Eric didn’t really know what he was talking about, he agreed with him. ‘Aye, I will.’ Then Eric ran him a bath, and while he lay soaking in it made them their tea, and they sat and watched garbage on the TV till close-down.

§

Mike used to see Sam – ‘the biker’ as he’ll always think of him – from time to time. Sam would come on to him – ‘I tellt ye, I tellt ye,
I said this was what ye wanted’ – and Mike would tell him to get lost till it became a joke between them. ‘I’m invincible,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll persuade ye sooner or later.’ Sam wanted as much sex as he could get. Why not? The worst that could happen would be a dose of the clap but he’d have a lot of fun getting it. There was one club, you went in and there were more cocks on display than bottles on the gantry. Not Mike’s scene. He wanted intimacy, not excess. Sam said Mike was copping out, if you were gay you had to flaunt it. ‘Why?’ ‘Because if you don’t, if
we
don’t, we’re still not visible. If we slink about in the shadows the way you do then all we’re doing is saying thank you for tolerating us, we promise we’ll be sweet and discreet and we won’t upset you. That’s not good enough.’ Mike said, ‘I don’t see it like that, but even if I did I can’t
make
myself be like you. It’s just not who I am.’ ‘Suit yourself, dear,’ Sam said, and he did. He drifted back to his preferred haunts in the Old Town, to Sandy Bell’s, to Jean Barbour’s. It was easy enough to get sex when he needed sex. A lot of the time, he didn’t need it.

At the end of his first year at college, he decided he couldn’t face a summer in Doom. He stayed on in the flat at Tollcross, as did Eric, and got a job in a café on the High Street, serving weak coffee and overpriced cakes to tourists. Money was tight. On his days off he wandered round the city, taking pictures, going to free exhibitions. It was Festival time: there were endless opportunities for photographs. He used the college facilities to develop them, and stuck them up outside the Fringe office and in other locations with his name and phone number written on the back. Somebody might notice. Somebody might want more of the same.

One day, on Princes Street outside Jenners, he bumped into Freddy Eddelstane. He’d had no contact with him since leaving school, but there he was, as antique and ugly and fleshy as ever, accompanied by a taller, thinner, altogether more prepossessing version of himself. This was his older brother, David. It turned out that they knew somebody who knew Eric Hodge and they were all supposed to be meeting for a drink when the pubs opened.

‘What are you doing these days?’ Mike asked Freddy.

‘Not a lot. Didn’t want to do any more bloody exams after school, so I’ve been hanging out at the ancestral pile mostly, but things are getting a bit fraught there. Threat of expulsion if I don’t get off my
arse. Think I’ll go to London and make pots of money. That’s what David does.’

‘If he’s going to London, I’m coming to Edinburgh,’ David said. ‘Little parasite.’

‘It’s the way I was brought up,’ Freddy said. ‘Youngest child and all that. David has a more heightened sense of social responsibility. He’s decided to follow the noble Eddelstane tradition and go into politics. He fought a seat in the election in February. Lancashire or somewhere. Didn’t do badly, did you?’

‘Lanarkshire, Freddy. No, not badly. Better than expected. Safe Labour seat, of course. If they put up a donkey it would win it.’

‘He’s going to contest it again whenever the next election happens,’ Freddy said. ‘Glutton for punishment. Meanwhile, we’re going shopping. Want to come?’

‘No, thanks. I’m going to an exhibition at a gallery down at Canonmills.’

‘Well, why don’t you join us for that drink later?’

He named a bar at the other end of the New Town. Mike said he’d see them there.

‘What’s the exhibition?’ David Eddelstane asked.

‘Photographic. It’s called “Love Hurts”. The photographer’s from Edinburgh originally, makes a lot of her humble roots, but she’s been away a long time. More
Guardian
than Granton now, I think. Her stuff’s been causing a bit of controversy because it’s about sex. The usual Mrs Grundies want to close it down.’

‘Sounds better than trailing round the shops with him,’ David said. ‘Mind if I tag along?’

In those few seconds looks passed between them. Mike remembered what Freddy had said once about his brother. David seemed affable enough. Surely there was no harm in spending an hour or two with him, even if he did have ambitions to be a Tory MP.

‘Not at all,’ Mike said.

‘Great. Let’s go and see what the fuss is about.’

Freddy said he’d give it a miss and meet them later at the pub. He headed off, and the others set off to find the gallery.

‘Love Hurts’ was disappointing, and crowded with the disappointed. The photographs expounded a thesis on relations between men and women that was obvious, possibly even correct, but deeply
depressing. There were a few breasts and a flaccid penis or two, and some images with S&M connotations, but most of the pictures were of couples, in various states of dress or undress, failing to communicate with each other. A naked man looking out of a window while a woman sleeps. A man and a woman at opposite ends of a sofa, both for some reason in their underwear, both staring straight ahead at the television. A woman trying to feed a squalling child while a man reads the paper. They gave the impression of documentary but to Mike looked like they’d been posed, and however worthy the thesis he didn’t think they were any good as photos. ‘They don’t do anything for me either,’ David agreed. The gallery was hot and oppressive. They left and walked through the Botanic Gardens, busy because of the fine weather, then across Inverleith Park, until they came to the path leading to the Water of Leith. Down there it was shadier and cooler, and there weren’t so many people.

‘I’m serious about moving back to Scotland,’ David said. ‘I’ve been in London six years and it just gets dirtier and noisier and smellier. There’s no denying it’s where everything happens, politically, I mean, but I intend to stand in a winnable Scottish seat eventually so I should really set myself up here too. Get the best of both worlds.’

‘Freddy said you made money,’ Mike said. ‘What is it you do?’

‘Investments, of one kind or another. Property’s my thing, really. There’s a lot one could do in Edinburgh. It’s all just waiting to be exploited. We need a change of government, of course, but then that’s why I’m getting into politics.’

‘We’ve just had a change of government.’

‘I mean a
real
change of government. Even if Heath got back in, it wouldn’t change things. Not
really
change things.’

Mike could have made an argument out of it, but couldn’t be bothered. Why spoil the moment? It was August and the sun was shining, and Edinburgh was looking its best, and there was something else in the air, something in the way they caught each other’s eye, the way their arms brushed as they walked. They talked about Kilsmeddum Castle and agreed what a dump it was, and after that line of conversation was exhausted Mike thought it quite likely that they didn’t have much else in common. But still they walked on together, under Telford’s bridge and into Dean Village, and on
through Stockbridge. They were killing time, really, before the pub opened. Mike said, ‘I think there’s a short cut up this way, shall we try it?’ They went down a mews and came to a dead end, and were about to turn back when David said, ‘What about in there?’ pointing to a low wall with a bit of broken fence and a gap where the grass had been worn away by the passage of many feet. They looked as if to dare each other. David said, ‘I’m up for it if you are,’ and they went through the gap. There was a faint path between bushes and trees, and on either side were quiet streets full of parked cars. The streets seemed abandoned, they could see out on to them but if they didn’t move they wouldn’t be seen
from
them, but to be sure they went deeper, past broken glass, dropped cigarette ends, bits of paper, a plastic bag or two, with the rich smells of vegetation and cat’s pee and something dead and something human mixing and closing around them. The ground was dry mud with occasional scraps of pale grass. They were mere yards from everything but it felt as if they’d entered a magical yet decaying space. And then it happened. They were down on their knees and groping, feeling for each other through their trousers, and then they both unzipped and masturbated each other on to the hard ground. Like a competition, a schoolboy trick. They had to stifle their giggles and then Mike stopped laughing and felt stupid and ashamed, as if he were thirteen, and if only he had been, if only he’d been thirteen, if only he’d got to do this at thirteen, but he hadn’t, he was a grown man and he’d just tossed off a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Conservative and Unionist Party.

Afterwards – when they’d brushed themselves down, ‘made ourselves respectable’ as David put it, and finally extricated themselves from the short cut – David said casually, as if it wasn’t
that
important, ‘No need to say anything about this, is there?’ and Mike said no, there wasn’t. ‘Wouldn’t be wise,’ David said. ‘No.’ And then a smile, relief of the non-hand variety. ‘Good man. Freddy said you were all right.’ Another pause. ‘I’m not really, you know, like that.’

‘I am,’ Mike said.

David blanched. ‘Oh God. I just want to try different things out. I can’t imagine why I allowed myself –’

‘Oh be quiet,’ Mike said angrily. They walked on to the pub, a tiny, plush place with a row of barrels along one wall and a good
range of real ales and malt whiskies. It was full of wealthy, well-kept men who lived in the wealthy, well-kept neighbouring streets. In one corner was Freddy, with another couple of friends who sounded just like him, and then Eric Hodge turned up. For a few hours much drink was consumed. And Mike was thinking, what am I doing, these are not the people I want to be with, but I’m with them so I’ll make the most of it, and he stayed, but on the sidelines of the jokes and the raucous laughter, feeling strange and out of place. David Eddelstane hardly looked at him, and when he did it was with a blank, bland gaze that did not speak at all of what they had done. It was never to be spoken of, never to be repeated, Mike saw. He understood that it really had been an aberration of some kind for David, but would it always be like that for him – unacknowledged, childish moments in the undergrowth, nights of love in places he must not return to? He longed for something better.