Of course there is. No question. It’s a very mysterious
place. People, scientists, have actually seen things on
echo-sounders that they can’t identify or anything. Uh huh,
down the stairs on the lower deck, a range of hot snacks,
light refreshments and we also have a licensed bar
.
Well I haven’t myself yet. But there’s always today, eh
?
Course I do. Course there is. Well, I haven’t myself, but I
know she’s there, and you never know, today might be the
day, it’s a beautiful day for it, eh
?
Beautiful. She is stuck on the boat for another four hours, stuck behind here till they all get back on the boat, free admission to the castle included on their cruise ticket then Highland Cruises charge the stupid fuckers another fifteen quid for a ticket back on the boat again if they don’t want to take the bus, and there’s going to be nothing but complaining all the way home about how there’s no soft drinks and how it’s lunchtime and there’s only crisps left, and she will be stuck behind here taking the complaints all the way back to the canal bridge.
The German woman is on her back with her eyes closed on the bench. Gemma knows she is German because she was speaking German when she came down the stairs holding her head, and her Loch Ness leaflet, on the floor, Gemma will have to pick it up later with all the other stuff that gets dropped on the floor, is in German. The girl reading the book by the door is something else, Gemma doesn’t know what, her clothes look expensive, she is pretty, handsome almost, dark and continental-looking, from somewhere else, somewhere that’s always warm, and she is not the least bit interested in the loch or the trees or the castle or the monster or any of it, she’s been down here by herself reading that book since the boat left. She looks like she’s reading it backwards. She looks about the same age as Gemma. Why would you go on a cruise of Loch Ness, why would you buy a ticket for it, if you didn’t want to see the things you were supposed to see on the cruise? That girl is not in the least interested in the fact that she’s free to choose to read a book in the dark on the sunniest day there has ever been in the whole of Highland history while other people are stuck down here for four more hours of missed perfect sun and the Cokes practically all gone as early as Dochgarroch this morning and the mineral waters sold out, and fuckers really like to buy water, and the hot snacks finished and she’s very low on spirits.
But in ten and a half weeks’ time she will be studying
what images mean and how they mean in contemporary
culture
as it says in the prospectus. She will be living in a big city she has only been to twice before. Nobody will know who she is. Nobody will care what she does. She will not be anywhere near this beautiful (she wouldn’t be Scottish if she didn’t) place she is so proud of, nowhere near this boat, the boring beautiful trees, the endless queues of people from other places all looking at the boring beautiful water. She will not have anyone telling her when she’s allowed in the sun and when she isn’t, or anyone breathing down her neck every time she goes into the stock cupboard at the office, pushing in behind her looking for what he can get then when he doesn’t get it watching her like he’s making sure she’s not taking anything out of there that’s not hers, reminding her who owns the boat, who’s paying her wages, and on a beauty of a day like it is today she will be free to go home after classes, or whatever it is the shape of the days in the new place will be, and there’ll be nothing on her back, nobody else she has to be watching out for or worried about. The lady over the road whose niece teaches at the school stopped her in the street and told her, on the quiet on her way home from work yesterday, that Jasmine is telling people at the school, and not just any old people but her guidance teacher, that their parents drowned, it was in a speedboat accident apparently. When she got home last night Jasmine was out. She was still out after midnight, and this morning Kimberley was asleep. In ten and a half weeks Kimberley will have to be the one who worries about twelve-year-olds being out after midnight and wherever the hell they are, because she herself will be somewhere else, elsewhere, far from here, finding out what images mean and why they are important.
Imagine if, after all, they actually were in a speedboat that overturned and threw the both of them flailing across a stretch of water, and down they went into the dark of it. That would be almost nice. It is quite inspired of Jasmine really. At least you would know where they were. At least you could look at the surface of the water and know that this was where they’d gone down. At least they would be dead and it would mean something, instead of just living somewhere else with other people they’re having sex with. She imagines them in their best clothes, light holiday clothes, and they have a camera, like every other fucker, and they’re filming the future come speeding towards them from behind what seems the safety of the windshield of the speedboat, and the nose of the boat is up as it cuts the loch, and it’s the moment before it curves too fast and the front rises and rises in the air until it flips itself over like an omelette, or a pancake, which is something she remembers her mother making one time when they came home from school, on the Tuesday in spring you are supposed to have the pancakes on. She imagines the two of them standing awkwardly together like in the old wedding photographs, just standing with each other in the same space, and now their clothes are dated, but even so, it doesn’t matter, and even a fast-moving engine-vibrating doomed petrol-explosion of a space, a space that is any second about to overturn, is a good option. Then both of them are shooting through the air, their arms and legs waving about, his silver-ribbed watch glinting as it flashes past on his hairy wrist, her sudden panic about what will happen to her hair when she hits the water, then if someone presses the button they can be paused like a freeze-frame on the video machine, held in air the moment before they disappear, and her and her sisters watching it not happen on the TV in the background as they sit round the table eating the pancakes with sugar on them and lemon, and a lemon was exotic, something they hardly ever had in the house, and Jasmine was only a tiny baby then and she herself was so small that the half-lemon, she remembers, was huge in her hand.
In her head she hears a voice saying something about the water.
She blinks. I’m sorry, I was miles away, she says.
The girl who was reading the book is standing in front of her at the bar.
On another planet, Gemma says. Can I help you?
Some water, the girl says. For that lady. I think she should maybe drink something.
I’m sorry, Gemma the Cruise Assistant says. We’re completely sold out. I can make you a hot drink if you’d like to choose one from the Drinks List.
The girl frowns, smiles, shakes her head.
I don’t want to buy water, she says, I just need you to give me some for the lady over there who’s feeling unwell.
I’m sorry, Gemma the Cruise Assistant says. It’s not allowed to just give out water. You have to buy bottled water, and I’m awful sorry but there’s none left. If you could choose something else off the List.
She indicates the Drinks List framed on the wall next to the bar.
You’re not allowed to give out water? the girl says. She looks Gemma the Cruise Assistant in the eye.
The boat shifts slightly beneath them.
That’s right, Gemma says.
See that lady over there on the seat? the girl says. She’s seriously dehydrated. She needs to drink something. Have you not got ordinary tap water? You must have. What do you use to make the coffee and tea?
The girl doesn’t sound at all foreign, she actually sounds Scottish. But she doesn’t look Scottish and the book in her hand on the bar is in a language with letters Gemma doesn’t recognize; the language, whatever it is with its tailed and coily letters, makes her feel queasy, like she felt when she went to the Baptist church on Castle Street with her friend once, years ago, and the people in the congregation kept standing up and shouting stuff out about God whenever they felt like it, like mad people.
The girl is speaking slowly and clearly now as if she thinks Gemma is an idiot. The fucker.
I’m really sorry, madam, Gemma says. I’m not allowed to use the water for ordinary drinking, it’s only to be used for hot drinks.
Why can’t it be used for ordinary drinking? the girl says.
Anyway, the bar is closed, Gemma says.
The girl looks at Gemma as if she hasn’t heard properly what she said. The bar is what? she says.
The bar has to close for the hour while the boat is empty, Gemma says. It’s mandatory.
The girl snorts.
It’s for licensing laws, Gemma says.
You just said I could buy something off the Drinks List, the girl says. Were you open then, ten seconds ago, and now you’re shut?
I’m awful sorry, Gemma says.
The girl leans forward, still looking her square in the eyes. Her skin is definitely dark this close up though she still sounds really Glasgow. Gemma takes a step back.
Listen, you, the girl says. Do you know what dehydration actually does to someone?
While she is talking about blood and dizziness and seizures and hospitals, Gemma looks her back in the eye, maintains her polite face and thinks the word over and over in her head. Fucker fucker fucker fucker fucker. What are they like, the fuckers, coming here and thinking just because they’ve bought their ticket they can be telling people what to do? Coming here and then not even wanting to see how beautiful the sights are. Not even interested. Reading a book in a weirdo language instead. Thinking the world owes them a living. Gemma almost smirks, manages not to, nods politely as if she’s listening. When the girl has finished, she smiles her most friendly smile at her, reaches up above her head, pulls down the metal blind that shuts the bar off from the rest of the room and locks it in place with the padlock.
She can hear the girl’s disbelief on the other side of the blind. She jumps when the blind rattles, when the girl hits at it a couple of times. She is full of sudden excited glee; it is like a different person is in her, pushing against her own skin to get out of her. She puts her arms around herself. Her heart is beating like mad. The foreign girl can complain if she likes. She is out of here in ten weeks and away.
The floor is covered in the ripped-up cardboard and discarded plastic of a busy morning. The rubbish bin is overflowing at the back. Whose idea was it to call them fuckers? She doesn’t know; it is what everyone calls them on the boat and in the boat office. Every morning the queue of them waiting to get on the boat reaches all the way to the main road. They wear bright colours and sunglasses, they carry all manner of useless stuff around with them. They’re so hopeful, like dogs waiting for their time for a walk.
There isn’t much light in here with the blind down. The only window is small and blocked by the fridge; through the crack of daylight visible she can see the castle outside falling and lifting. There isn’t much room to move, and there is nothing left to drink except the coffee and tea water, and she can’t drink that, she’ll need it all the way back.
That German woman might die.
She wonders what the girl is doing. If it was her out there, and it was an emergency, she’d go round the boat collecting the dregs from other people’s glasses and cans and bottles and give her that. She wonders if that’s what that girl is doing now. She puts her head close to the blind but she can’t hear anything. The astonishing thing about that girl is how smooth her skin was. When she brought her face close to Gemma’s across the bar Gemma had seen its surface, and how her eyes were, they were
She sinks on to the bar stool. The eyes were beautiful. The beautifulness of them has sliced so deep into her without her even knowing that’s what it was doing that she stares at the blind straight ahead of her because if she looks down she might see herself peeled back, opened at the skin; she doesn’t dare look down in case she is actually bleeding. She remembers the wounded look on the face of the old Canadian lady as she stood on the deck and stared out at the summer land. She fingers the twenty pound note in her pocket. Somewhere in Canada in the future she will be smiling off a screen, telling people she’s never seen and never will things about tartan and clans and the place she’s from. Her voice will come out of a TV into the air of a place she has no idea about. There are versions of her all over the world by now; smiling versions of her have crossed so many seas and she doesn’t even know it.
Maybe she should push the blind up and go out there and help the girl. She should use the hot drinks water. Nobody will know; she will say they sold a huge number of teas and coffees. It’s such a hot day. Nobody will wonder. She will put in money out of her pay to make it look like more were sold. She will hide a pile of sachets and tea bags in her rucksack. The German woman will blink and nod and say she saved her life. The girl with the eyes that can read unexpected languages will smile at her. Maybe she is from the city that Gemma is going to be studying in. Maybe when the boat docks today and Gemma leaves for home, the girl will tuck the book under her arm and follow Gemma the Cruise Assistant home at a distance, being shy, and knowing Gemma is shy. On the way home Gemma will slow down and let her catch up; they will walk past the cemetery along to the end of the canal and down into the town, and Gemma will show her the sights. The art gallery. The museum. The cathedral. The theatre. The castle. The rabbits eating the grass on the hill under the castle, if they are patient enough to catch sight of them. The seals in the river, if they’re lucky, if the river is low. The places where Gemma went to school. The boat office. Gemma has a key; everybody else will have gone home. There will be nobody else in there, it will be empty, and the light will be evening light by then. She tosses her hair. She takes a deep breath.