A Year in Fife Park (14 page)

Will’s big night came at the Fencing Club dinner. Fencing was a big thing in Fife Park 7. Gowan and Will had joined at the start of the year and displayed an immediate proficiency with the foil, or at least an immediate passion for hurting each other with anything shaped vaguely like one. The competition between them bred a special kind of aggression, which could only be satisfied by a hole left in something or someone.

They used to face off along the downstairs corridor whenever they were drunk, fighting with whatever offensive weapons they could lay their hands on. In fact, as we later discovered, that’s what had happened to the doors of rooms two and three, even before Frank got involved.

The dinner was an annual event for the Fencing Club, and books could probably be written solely about that. In fact, on the strength of a couple of the stories, combined of course with my longstanding desire to be a Jedi Knight, I joined the Fencing Club myself – too late though, for the club dinner that year, at which Will went for a thoroughly ambitious rebound fling.

[Most people, even people in the club, don’t realise that there’s actually a genuine, directly traceable Kevin Bacon style connection between St. Andrews University Fencing Club and Darth fucking Vader.]

He got very, very drunk, found two ladies of remarkable girth and, unable to choose between them, chose rather to take both girls home and divvy up whatever was left of his libido at the end of a hard night’s drinking. It was, apparently, not very much. Both girls left heartily unsatisfied with proceedings, and Will passed out shortly afterwards.

The next day, Gowan stencilled the word ‘
some’
after the large 3 on Will’s door. It was okay, because we all knew that the door was going to need replaced by that point.

Funnily enough, after hooching up on White Lightning that night, we caught a taxi into town whose driver was unable to resist telling us about his largest ever fare.

‘My axle was creaking, I swear,’ he said of the three costumed fornicators who had lately occupied his vehicle. ‘A real skinny guy in the middle, but mind there wasn’t a spare inch on the seat. All dressed like schoolgirls, they were.’

Frank

I don’t think Frank got any action. A girl came up to him in the bop one night, and seductively took his cigarette. She breathed smoke back at him with provocatively pursed lips.

‘Fuck Off,’ Frank said.

‘Dude,’ I told him.

‘Bitch was after my smokes,’ Frank said.

Dylan

Dylan is a strange one. He simultaneously knows what he wants, and is very shy. He sometimes speaks about sex, but with a kind of near-Buddhist reverence and a sage detachment that makes you wonder if he might not be confusing it with biblical exegesis. He has old-fashioned morals, or maybe he’s ahead of his time and they’re actually post-modern. I don’t know quite what they are. There’s a bit of guilt in there for sure, so they might be traditional after all. He shies away from vulgarity. He has an almost eastern respect for the body. He is quiet and reserved and will immediately turn his nose up at any particularly candid information with a hearty ‘that’s
awful’
.

That’s one of the reasons I like to subject Dylan to whatever particularly sordid thing that comes to mind. The other is that he’s one of those rare, few people who won’t really think any less of you afterwards. I like to be honest with Dylan. As long as you can put up with being told that whatever else it may be it’s also awful, then you’re in the clear with him. I like that.

Dylan has a strange way with women, who will fall into his arms at a moment’s notice, usually in a manner that hinders but does not preclude romance. In second year he met a girl called Joanne, who was obviously the spawn of Highlanders and hippies. She was from so far up North that English might have been her second language. 

There was a long lull period before they actually hit it off, although the point of no return probably came not too far into the semester.

However, Dylan did not Beast Joanne. Certainly he didn’t Beast her at this stage, and then he didn’t Beast her later either, because Dylan was above Beasting anyone.

Darcy and Euan

It was quite obvious that Darcy and Euan were going to hook up or flirt each other to death. I was completely unsurprised by the news that it had happened.

‘I just can’t believe it,’ Darcy enthused.

‘You’ve been talking about him for weeks,’ I said.

‘Yeah, but it was amazing.’

‘Which part of the obvious, natural, and inevitable was the most shocking to you?’ I asked.

‘Alright, no need to get all bitchy,’ Darcy said. ‘I’m just sharing the news.’

‘No, it’s fine. Enjoy the moment,’ I told her. ‘I’m happy for you.’

The truth was that I was really pleased that two of my good friends had got together. I just wished it was two of my other friends, because, even though I didn’t find Darcy that appealing, I was kind of in love with her. At least I think that I was, because it felt like my guts were in a vice every time I heard Euan’s name.

This was no irrational, hopeless crush; I didn’t even fancy Darcy. This was a different feeling, altogether. I kept an option on the hopeless part, though.

David Russell Apartments

There’s no doubt I’ve put these pivotal moments of my life on unnecessary and undeserving pedestals. This book ought to be testament enough to that. But, apparently, I hold an undeserved reverence for the streets and buildings as well.

A few years ago, on discovering my old haunt David Russell Hall had been reduced to raw masonry, I found myself looking with a kind of venom at the newer and – let’s be honest – much,
much
nicer David Russell Apartments.

Maybe it was that bracing Fife wind roiling over the plain, or maybe somebody had just told me what it was going to cost to stay in DRA for 38 weeks, but as I stood staring over the decimated landscape, I had to dab at my eyes.

Don’t get me wrong, DRH was an abomination of a hall, and deserved to be razed to the ground by any civilized society. In the worst halls sweepstakes it was second only to the dark canker that is Andrew Melville, an atrocity of such magnitude that the earth itself has been attempting to swallow it since the mid eighties.

But DRH had
character
. It had
spirit
. It had
community
. All of which is a kind way of saying how naff the place was. It had those things by neglect as much as design but, sure, it had them. That was what let students make it their own. It was just run down enough to be open territory.

It had the same rules as the other halls, but they were out of place in a dive like DRH. The ‘no blutack’ rule seemed laughable in a place where the paint came off the walls if you coughed too hard. You used blutack anyway, and considered the warden lucky if you’d run out of permanent markers. That was what made those places a community; we were in it together, sure, but because we could own it, not just sleep in it.

You can’t say that about the new halls. They’ve got an ethos. The people who made them still think about them, they’re still proud of them. They can’t be owned by students, because someone else has a claim. Those halls have still got a statement to make, an image to maintain. And fuck me, they’ve got a price tag to go with it. I stayed in Fife Park because I was poor, not because I liked sleeping on horsehair. Anyone willing to join me in that was part of the goddamn cause. Sometimes I wonder if it would have been more odd
not
to end up punching holes in the place.

Thinking about Fife Park again as a place, not just a set of memories, makes me want to go back. While it’s still there. To do
something
. To remember it, or say goodbye, or take a picture. I don’t know; it doesn’t matter. I have nothing to give back to Fife Park, nothing to take from it. I’ve been writing about Fife Park for weeks, and I don’t even know what I had there a decade ago. This is the nature of nostalgia. Not just a longing for something long past, but a longing disconnected from tangible wants, and hardwired straight to desire itself, for its own sake, with no outlet.

Whatever I’m looking for, I won’t find it in brickwork.  Besides, most of Fife Park seems to have been made from cardboard.

David Russell Hall

Craig called me up one night, at about three in the morning, to tell me that he had taken some strange pills and was probably going to die. He was remarkably cheerful about it. I thought he was drunk.

‘Where did you get the pills?’ I asked him.

‘Some guy’s cupboard,’ he told me. ‘I had two! I mean, I don’t know what those things were. They could be for anything.’

‘What did they look like?’ I asked him.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Like pieces of chalk. For all I know you’re supposed to clean the toilet with them.’

‘Well, who did you get them from?’

‘Nobody, we just found them.’

‘You just found some toilet cleaning pills, so you thought you’d pop a couple?’

‘Yeah, man, pretty much. Oh, God, Sandy’s passed out. I think he’s stopped breathing….’ He paused. ‘No. wait. He’s okay.’ I could hear Sandy giggling in the background at this point.

‘Where did you find them?’

‘The pills? In some cupboard in the bathroom. I’m feeling pretty sleepy now, man.’

‘Which bathroom? Whose cupboard? Craig?’

‘Sandy took a light. You know, one of those UV ones?’

‘What about the pills? Did he take them, too?’

‘Yeah, well, he took half of one. He’s a pussy. He was going to take both halves but he chickened out on me.’

‘Whose idea was it to take them in the first place?’

That was a stupid question. Sandy and Craig didn’t have ideas, they just escalated each other into madness. When they lived together in fourth year, they stole a garden, right down to the last gnome.

‘Well, I’m going to bed now. Night, Quinn.’

‘Are you okay, Craig?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I’m probably going to die.’

‘Right. Sleep well.’

‘Chuh. Okay, well, look, goodbye.’

‘Right.’

Of course, I threw on some clothes and prepared to dash around there right away.

‘Frank,’ I shouted. ‘Frank!’

Frank showed up in his boxer shorts.

‘Did you break my fucking record?’

‘Frank,’ I said, ‘it’s Craig. He’s taken some crazy pills.’

‘Another mystery solved,’ Frank said.

‘Seriously, I think he’s poisoned himself.’

‘How many did he take?’ Frank said.

‘Two,’ I said. ‘He found them in some cupboard at a party.’

‘Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about it.’

‘They could be fucking anything, he says.’

‘Two of anything won’t kill you,’ Frank said. He turned to leave.

‘Aren’t you fucking coming?’ I asked.

‘My work here is done.’

‘You can’t be so fucking sure,’ I said, churning with frustration.

‘No,’ Frank said. He shrugged.

‘He’s a mate,’ I said. ‘He’s a mate.’

‘And one of the many advantages of a medical background is not needing to give a shit when your mates go rooting through the medicine cabinet.’

‘I’m fucking going anyway,’ I said.

‘I know.’

‘Seriously, Frank. What do I fucking do?’

‘Chill out,’ he said. ‘Maybe take one of those pills.’

I ran across the Fife Park car park in a dirty T-shirt, with no socks on under my trainers.

The block door was ajar, so I pelted right up to Craig’s landing. I literally stumbled on Sandy, as I got there. He lay, curled in a foetal position, cradling a metre long strip light.

‘Are you okay Sandy?’ I asked. He was shivering. His forehead was beaded with sweat.

‘New level!’ he said. ‘New level.’

Craig’s door was open, and he was on his bed, staring up at the ceiling.

‘Craig,’ I said.

I stood in the doorway, not wanting to enter without an invitation, despite myself.

‘Hey Quinn,’ Craig said. ‘What’s up?’

‘You called,’ I said.

‘Mm.’

‘You took some pills.’

‘And a blacklight.’

‘How are you feeling?’ 

‘He just unplugged it and put it on the windowsill,’ Craig said.

‘The light?’

‘Yeah. We were at a party.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know, do I? Oh, God, it was yahed-up to the max.’

‘You got the pills at the party?’

It was detective work. Craig was evidently fucked out of his face, and Sandy was dribbling on the carpet.

‘Everyone was watching him like he’d gone crazy. But he just walked out of the room calm as a breeze. Then when we got outside he grabbed it from the other side, and ran like hell.’

‘The pills, though.’

‘Yeah, we stole those too. From the bathroom cupboard!’

‘Okay. That makes sense. Can I see the pills? Are there any left?’

‘Sandy’s got them.’

He did. He was clutching about five or six of them in one sweaty palm.

They looked like horse pills. There was no way that they were intended for human consumption, and you’d have to have been a fool to think so. I laughed despite myself.

‘Well, you’re in unfamiliar territory here,’ I said.

They were oval shaped, and had little green speckles in them. They did seem to be made of chalk.

It’s possible you were meant to dissolve them in something. It’s also possible that you were meant to clean toilets with them. They didn’t smell of anything. I half expected them to smell like herbal extract, or bath salts. If they had been scented lavender, then everything would have fallen into place. My mind was running over what I should do. I couldn’t think of a thing that made sense.

I took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to do anything. Not this time.

I wasn’t going to run around being the one who was worried all the time. Fucking Craig wasn’t even worried, and he had two toilet pills in his gut. Frank wasn’t worried. Sandy wasn’t... Well, Sandy was licking a stolen blacklight, I wasn’t about to take his views into account. The only person who was worried was me. I don’t even know why Craig called me. Maybe he just figured
someone
should be worried, and he thought of me first.