Boswell's Bus Pass (25 page)

As we left the pub David stopped and stared at previously unseen glass cases screwed to the wall. Rarely had I seen him so animated as he provided a complete inventory of their contents; a 19th century cavalry sword (British), a Nazi dirk, an Indian sabre, a seventeenth century cutlass, a British bayonet from World War 1, a Ghurka kutri, a Mughal push dagger, a Japanese Katana, an Indonesian Kris and a gentleman’s dress sword.

The Light Brigade burst heroically from the gents where they had been hiding for 156 years; they galloped over the Japanese warriors. The Tommies charging in vain from the trenches encountered some resistance from the whirling Dervishes before sweeping aside the remnants of the SS and cantering into the Gallowgate where they fell into the hand of the local Tim Malloys and were massacred, every last man.

In Buchanan Street bus station a tall angry man stooped to stand nose to nose with a petite Chinese girl. It was either the end of a relationship or an aggressive ritual enacted after every afternoon drinking session. The fact that he wore a child’s woollen hat with sticky-out rabbit ears did little to diminish the threat he posed. I hoped he wouldn’t hit her.

The 76 to Kilmarnock jolted its way past four school kids who had skived off school, the girls’ skirts wrenched up and their ties hanging like nooses. A man with one leg swung his way across the road – cancer, war, a road accident, body dysmorphic disorder? He was
watched by a line of men in overalls sitting on a low wall. An adjacent shop displayed a print of their iconic counterparts lunching on a girder high above New York. The grey Clyde was lined with graffitied pillars holding up various motorways as fabled elephants once held up the world. Where was the lone boatman whose life’s work was to drag bodies from the river?

Once out of the city the autumn colours fought a rearguard action before capitulating to the insidious bleakness of Fenwick Moor where even the brown spumy burns were escaping as fast as they could. The ragged flags flying valiantly from the Fenwick Hotel had already lost the war of the winds. Wheelie bins lay slain at the end of every track. A stolen Jaguar sat abandoned plastered with POLICE AWARE stickers.

Neither Boswell nor Johnson could be bothered to describe the journey to Auchenleck to visit the younger man’s father. It was an encounter that neither of the travellers would have relished. Johnson had already been urged to bite his tongue and behave when in the presence of the circuit judge who held diametrically opposed views about almost everything. Earlier Nigel Leask had pointed out that the meeting must have been difficult as, in so many ways, Johnson was the father whom Boswell had chosen.

Kilmarnock bus station is the circle that Dante forgot. It is a transit point for Unthank. The concourse is managed by crypto- fascists with shrill whistles which they blow incessantly, ostensibly to guide incoming buses but in fact to intimidate all within earshot and induce a sense of mounting dread in the poor and dispossessed. The refugees flatten themselves against the bilious billboards to let pass the surreal scarab machine hoovering up fag ends and small children but not the gobbets of spit that emerge intact from under its brushes.

A line of very threatening men in their late twenties scowled at the innocents weighed down with plastic bags as they tried to squeeze past. It was impossible not to think of them in their day job at the barracks intimidating recruits stripped of clothes and dignity, cupping their genitals as they brave the line of kicks and abuse. As we leave the station a woman wrestles with her dog as if it were a playful lover. The bus picks up speed and I see another woman falling down in a car park and spilling her shopping and then she has gone. Was she all right? Did she get up and brush herself down? Did people rush to help her?

The bus provided much needed respite. It was after all an ECO Bus
which presumably ran happily on recycled horse dung and old copies of the
Daily Record
. Its exterior was decorated with daisies. Everyone who got on knew and greeted at least three other people. Seats were gladly swapped to make the chat easier. The warm fug of community washed through the bus. The peaks on the conversation monitor indicated the outbreaks of laughter as days were swapped and embellished to give them structure and interest. The adolescent legs swinging from the bench reserved for heavier items belonged to people who were just listening to each other; not teasing, just listening. A fierce young man, his mane of electric red hair barely tamed by a reinforced headband chatted animatedly to his tiny and severely disabled partner. Whenever someone got off the courtesy was there again, ‘Much obliged, driver, thanks a lot.’

The hamlets through which we passed were never more than one house thick. The back gardens had fought a lost battle with the encroaching moorland which was oozing its cold slaver over sheds and abandoned toys. A lone farmer marked out a muted green Saltire with his quad bike; a hidden act of agrarian patriotism.

All roads led to Kilmarnock prison, which was probably a fair reflection of life’s realities for many.

An ill-drawn silhouette of Robert Burns’ head swung from the sign that marked the borders of Mauchline. Our village may be as poor but, heh, the boy stayed here. A pity though they had not been blessed with real heroes like that place in Lanarkshire that could boast Matt Busby, Barry Ferguson, Tom Cowan and Sheena Easton. Still, beggars can’t be choosers.

There was also no immediate sign that the Mauchline Belles had established a dynasty in the town. Burns must have been thirteen or thereabouts and living a few miles away when the post chaise swept by carrying Boswell and Johnson to the Auchinleck Estate. The only oblique connection between them is Burns’ derogatory reference to Boswell in
The Author’s Earnest Cry and Prayer
.

Boswell must have been gabbing nervously as the meeting between the two men came ever closer.

In Catrine a man wearing an army surplus green and brown camouflage jacket left the bus and instantly disappeared apart from his disembodied head which bobbed briefly past the woodlands.

In a cold Auchinleck we sought directions to the estate and castle from an enthusiastic butcher who also doubled as the postmaster, surely an informed and respectable member of the local community. Appearances however lived up to their reputation for deception. Despite greeting us like long-lost and greatly-missed blood relations who owed him money, he pointed us in completely the wrong direction. He may have been beset with folk memories of preparing Auchinleck to withstand Nazi invasion, choosing the verbal
equivalent
of turning all sign posts to face the wrong way and hence gain valuable time during which the Lowland Division of Dad’s Army would regroup and stick it up them, whether they liked it or not. The outcome was the same as we wandered through a housing estate wondering where all the human beings had got to. Eventually a woman taking shopping from her car was cornered by David until she provided accurate directions.

The bus when it came was of the bendy variety. Although our expectations and pleasure thresholds had both appreciably lowered since entering Auchinleck this was a welcome intrusion of 21st century Manhattan into a bleak corner of Ayrshire. We shared this mobile accordion with a father and son, blue clones, both of whom had chosen every item of their clothing from the Rangers FC on line catalogue. They looked us up and down for any subtle indicators of religious affiliation, a Vincent de Paul lapel badge perhaps or a stray set of rosary beads hanging from a careless pocket. Beyond the black concertina a woman rested her head on the seat in front, her eyes on springs like a toy caterpillar.

We passed the A-frame memorial at the site of the former Barony pit which is presumably visible from the moon, an angry piece of machinery straddling the land below. If this represents but one letter of the alphabet what bitter, proud message would a complete sentence spell? The website dedicated to recording the names and lives of those who died in Ayrshire mines makes for salutary reading: falling rocks, suffocating fumes, runaway hatches, a man dragged along the pit by a frightened horse trailing a chain; a man stunned by a
falling stone and knocked into a moving conveyor belt; a man who fell down the shaft, a dark nightmare tumble; a man crushed between a shunting pole and a wagon and the man dragged into the pit’s monstrous washing machine. Many of the dead had connections with junior football.

Because of daftness or because we were blinded by the rain we took the wrong path after passing the gatehouse at the entrance to the Auchinleck estate. An already bleak day was made worse by the jacket-penetrating, will-sapping intensity of the downpour. Death by hypothermia was a comforting option. Brandy-bearing St Bernards cowered in their kennels, meteorologists in waders gleefully calibrated the flood waters rising in the burn and we shivered. I promised never again to think disparaging thoughts about Rangers supporters and would, next time, intervene whenever David looked like cornering innocent women getting out of their cars – anything if only the rain would stop. It didn’t and we floundered towards the only
woodcutter
’s cottage in a blasted landscape. Bring on the big bad wolf.

Parked round the side was a psychedelic relic of a camper van decorated with fluffy clouds and the reminder that LOVE IS ALL. Our spirits lifted as we were ushered into a dope-smoke filled room by a tall beautiful woman with flowers in her hair who offered to help us remove our sodden clothes with a knowing look that promised much much, more. ‘Sah-ahr-geant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band …’

The sole occupant was not Mrs Kite whose husband would perform tricks tonight but a small elderly woman who exuded Christian comfort and good advice. We would have to retrace our wet steps for at least two miles. After one of those miles a 4x4 slowed down to let the redneck driver get a good look at us in case he returned to discover that his little old mum had been trussed up and gagged by pension stealing visitors.

After a few more sodden sodding miles we are blown into a clutch of dilapidated farm buildings, broken machinery and weeds. Despite the prevalence of KEEP OUT DANGEROUS BUILDING and related signs that must have used up a year’s supply of exclamation marks we caught sight of someone moving at a window and knocked at the door which was eventually opened by a giant. The massively tall man with cap stared down at us, quickly decided we are harmless and pointed out that we had completed a circular tour of the River Lugar
and had unknowingly passed within 100 metres of Auchinleck House.

It is undeniably an imposing structure, now fully restored to its 18
^th
century grandeur and is rented out as holiday accommodation. There were few signs of life and no one we could ask for a peek inside. Through which window did Boswell gaze miserably in the aftermath of the blazing row between his two fathers?

Johnson had been instructed to keep clear of raising any
contentious
subject but the armed truce was unsustainable. ‘In the course of their altercation’, writes Boswell, ‘Whiggism and Presbyterianism, Toryism and Episcopacy, were terribly buffeted.’ In his cartoon version of events Rowlandson shows Johnson about to wallop Old Auchinleck over the head with a tome at least as big as volume 1 (A – K) of his own dictionary. Boswell simpers in the background with his fingers rammed into his mouth while several coins roll about the floor. The coins were part of the old judge’s coin collection. He had already shown Johnson his Brooke Bond tea card album (
Fresh-water
Fish) and Star Wars collections without incident. It was the head of Oliver Cromwell on the new 50p that provoked Johnson to apoplexy.

As part of the negotiated truce they walked down to look at the castle in the grounds. Johnson declared himself, ‘less delighted with the elegance of the modern mansion, than with the sullen dignity of the old castle. I clambered with
Mr Boswell
among the ruins, which afford striking images of ancient life.’ I clambered among the ruins with David and we were struck by images of modern life in the form of empty lager cans and fag packets. The ruins are now precarious and must soon topple. Fully grown trees sprout from the remaining walls. Only their roots hold the frail edifice together as if the stones are being wrenched upwards by a huge bird holding them in its overstretched talons; Angkor Wat has relocated to Ayrshire.

Boswell might well have told the still-seething Johnson how in earlier times the castle’s owner had received a parcel containing a decaying sheep’s head delivered at the end of a rope strung from a neighbouring property. The upshot was general revenge, carnage and bloody murder. As he glanced at Old Auchinleck Johnson may have found this an attractive option.

We had hoped to embark on a mini grand tour of the other noble Ayrshire piles that the tourists visited but as the day was cold and getting darker we cut our losses and decided to restrict ourselves to Loudoun Castle where Boswell and Johnson were wonderfully entertained by John, Earl of Loudoun and his mother ‘who, in her ninety-fifth year, had all her faculties quite unimpaired. This was a very cheering sight to Dr Johnson who had an extraordinary desire for long life.’

Long life seemed a less than attractive thought as we squelched our way back down the interminable drive way, the end of which would have disappeared into a perfect vanishing point had the watery mist not claimed it first.

The bus to Kilmarnock dragged itself up the hill towards
Auchinleck
Academy its situation symbolic of a past era when education was both an aspiration and a way out. The gradual ascent took us up past a co-operative store the roof of which was coiled with barbed wire recycled from a grey grainy World War 1 battle field. The end wall of a boarded up house had been repainted to hide the foot high graffiti. What words of hate had been hidden from view? Were they sectarian, racial, personal? GRASS, NONCE, SCUM?