Tombstoning (13 page)

‘Yeah, of course.’

Nicola was leaning over the table with a triangle of shot glasses between her hands, careful not to spill anything, when she jumped as if knocked from behind. She quickly dumped the drinks and turned.

She was several inches taller than Mike Clarkson and was looking down on him. He had an evil glint in his eye.

‘Did you just pinch my fucking arse?’

‘Sorry, love, couldn’t resist it,’ said Mike, spreading his arms out in a gesture of goodwill, a near empty beer bottle in his right hand. ‘You’re looking so good these days, Nicky. What are you doing hanging about with a couple of losers like them?’

‘Just fuck off, Mike, eh?’ David shuffled round the booth to get up but Nicola gently motioned him to stop.

‘These two are about the only gentlemen in this shitehole,’ she said. ‘Everyone else in here seems to be a jumped-up little prick with a hardman complex stuck in the fucking 1980s.’

‘Shame you think that way, love. I was going to let you come home with me, show you what a real man can do for a woman like you.’

‘Does this charm routine work on anyone? Ever?’

‘Then again,’ said Mike, ignoring her and looking at David, ‘I wouldn’t want the sloppy seconds of someone like David here, would I? Your bucketfanny is probably fucking rancid, eh, love?’

David made a quick move to get up, but not quick enough and he felt the smash of the beer bottle against the back of his head as he lunged forward, grabbing Mike in a messy rugby tackle. The two of them tumbled to the floor. Like all drunken pub fights, the first few seconds were a ramshackle stalemate as both men clung onto each other, unable to extract limbs from the core of their scrum. But after a few moments Mike managed to wriggle a leg clear and kneed David in the bollocks, and as his grip loosened Mike got above him and smashed a thick forearm across his face. The bottle was gone from his other hand, but he was rabbit punching the back of David’s head, until finally he let go completely. Mike stood above him, screaming like a maniac and booting him square in the face when Gary jumped on him from behind. They struggled for a second before Gary also got an elbow in the face, shocking him into half-releasing his grip. Just then, several thick-set bouncers with no necks appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, the crackle of their headsets somehow heard over the throbbing bass from the dancefloor. Almost seamlessly, they separated Gary and Mike and lifted David from the floor, where he was beginning to prop himself up.

‘These cunts bothering you?’ they said to Mike, and David realized this was only going one way.

‘Yeah,’ said Mike, wiping his sleeve across his mouth. ‘Just jumped me for no reason.’

‘That’s bullshit and you know it,’ said Nicola, glaring at Mike, but even as she spoke Gary and David were being lifted off their feet and marched to the door. She stood for a second looking at Mike, who met her gaze impassively, just a little smile creeping into the corners of his mouth, then she turned on her heels to catch up with the bouncers as they headed through the foyer. Out of the corner of her eye she could sense Kirsty and her cabal soaking up every second of the action. For a moment she thought about turning to shout something at them, but she couldn’t think what to say, so instead she fired on, catching up with the bouncers outside the front door as they held Gary and David up against the weather-beaten, puke-splattered pebble-dashed walls.

‘We don’t fucking like trouble in our club, have you got that?’

‘You know as well as I do that Mike started it,’ said Gary, before getting a hefty smack across the face.

‘We don’t give a flying fuck who started it. But we know Mike and we don’t know you, so he’s staying in and you’re out. Now, don’t go thinking about hanging about here, maybe catching up with him when he leaves, ’cos we’ll be here then as well, and we’ll be keeping an eye out for you. And just in case you were feeling really stupid, don’t go getting the police involved, because we know them as well, and they don’t take too kindly to getting called away from their chips on a Saturday night.’

Gary and David were released and shoved nonchalantly backwards with enough force to make them both stagger and fall over in the patchy grass.

‘Now fuck off, the pair of you,’ said the bouncer at the front, then, glancing at Nicola, ‘and take this slag with you.’

‘Fuck you, prick,’ said Nicola, but the bouncers were already back inside the front door. The incessant beat of the music died as the door closed, to be replaced by the wash from the sea behind them. They stayed like that for a few moments, David and Gary on their arses, Nicola standing over them, before she sat down next to them on the grass and the three of them started laughing. They couldn’t stop themselves, as ripples of laughter passed from one to another, then back again, the volume getting louder as the laughter continued. Eventually they settled down, and were left surrounded by the sound of waves hitting the shore. There was no one else about, except for a lonely drunken figure slumped on a seat over by the crazy-golf course.

‘What a fucking arsehole,’ said Gary.

‘I think that pretty much goes without saying,’ said Nicola.

‘And those bouncers,’ said David. ‘They were the genuine article. Real 80s meatheads. I tell you, if anything’s going to take me back to my schooldays, it’s getting chucked out of this place by a bunch of skinhead bouncers who think they’re fucking Sly Stallone and Bobby De Niro. That is priceless. The perfect end to a perfect school reunion, really.’

They got slowly to their feet, swiped at their dusty arses and headed slowly away from Bally’s, never looking back. Behind them, the drunk guy at the crazy golf seemed to stir a little as they disappeared round the corner.

The sky was already gaining a watery grey wash around the edges as they said their goodbyes. Standing by the war memorial at the top of the High Common, they could see for miles: Gayfield and the harbour then the cliffs in one direction, Bally’s, Elliot Beach and the golf course the other way, and between them miles of slick, grey ocean, filling in the cracks of the world.

Gary was heading west to his folks’ house on Monymusk Road, David was angling to walk Kirsty home, past the Keptie Pond and the Lochlands. As he always did at drunken goodbyes, David felt a slight, subconscious twinge of memory, at some base level his mind recalling that night, the last night he’d seen Colin alive. That, combined with the morning dew already forming in the air, made him shiver slightly.

‘I guess I’ll be seeing you,’ said Gary.

‘Yeah, keep in touch this time,’ said David. ‘Have you got a pen? We should swap numbers.’

Nicola raked in her bag noisily, and eventually dug out a pencil and an old receipt. They exchanged numbers with Gary, then there was an awkward silence between them, no one sure what to say next. The evening seemed over, a line drawn under events by this ceremonial exchanging of details, after which nothing more should be said. Gary made awkwardly to hug David, who reciprocated in kind, then he kissed Nicola, and saying final farewells he walked along the path over the railway and headed home.

David and Nicola visibly relaxed as they watched him leave. Being with Nicola was an easy, comfortable sensation, thought David; it felt as if he’d known her for the last fifteen years. He felt a lot more sober than he had even half an hour ago. Whether it was because of the physical exertion or the fresh air or the lack of handbag house pounding in his ears he didn’t know, but he felt a lot more together here, walking across the grass with Nicola, their arms entwined the way lovers’ arms do. They walked slowly towards St Vigeans Road, neither of them feeling the need to say anything.

Eventually Nicola spoke.

‘I’m beginning to think you were right about this whole revisiting your past thing,’ she said. ‘I thought tonight was going to be a laugh, but it was pretty shocking really. Sorry for dragging you along.’

‘I’m not sorry. For a start, if I hadn’t come to Arbroath we wouldn’t have snogged last night, would we?’ He gave her a little nudge, and she smiled a coy smile at him.

‘I suppose not.’

‘Anyway, I really enjoyed myself tonight, despite getting in a tiny fight and getting chucked out. In fact, that made the whole thing better. And I got to meet up with Gary again, which was pretty cool. I mean, we’re not about to start being best mates or anything, but it would genuinely be good to keep in touch with him this time.’

Nicola looked at him.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘it seems we’ve totally switched our opinions about the past. Isn’t that weird?’

‘No, we haven’t. It just depends on what past you’re talking about. That kind of past’ – he indicated over his shoulder in the direction of Bally’s – ‘I can live without.’

‘I know what you mean.’

They walked on further, happy in silence for a while, the sky brightening to the east.

Outside Nicola’s house they kissed again, both of them more forceful and drunken than last night to begin with, then slowing and relaxing after the first few minutes, soaking up each other’s physical presence and drowning in it. Someone wolf-whistled them from the bottom of the street, but they didn’t break off, instead just giggled slightly into each other’s mouths in a communal sign of togetherness. Eventually they broke apart, and David actually felt dizzy.

‘You know, I’m going to go round the abbey tomorrow morning with Amy,’ said Nicola. ‘Before we head back to Edinburgh. Do you fancy coming?’

‘Yeah, that would be good. You can do your tour guide thing on me. Ignorant old history-hating me.’

‘I’m part of your history, amn’t I?’ Nicola said with a nose wiggle. ‘And you don’t hate me, do you?’

‘Hmm, let me think about that,’ said David, and they started to kiss again.

7
A Body

The morning sun spread across the mown, stripy lawns, bouncing off the oddly luminescent green moss that clung to the ramshackle stones in the graveyard. Amy ran ahead while Nicola and David sauntered casually up what would once have been the nave of the abbey. In front of them stretched two parallel chains of column stumps, like rows of giant buttons leading to the ruined east end of the nave. A handful of foreign tourists in cagoules drifted around the peaceful, crumbling sandy red walls, touching the warm stone as if hoping to soak up the history of the place by osmosis. Amy disappeared behind a wall and as Nicola raised her hand to shade her eyes she winced involuntarily as the sunlight made her head throb. All those doubles last night hadn’t been the best idea, she thought, but they’d done the trick of getting her steaming well enough.

‘I take it you don’t really want the tour-guide spiel?’ she asked David, who passed her a bottle of Irn Bru which she gratefully accepted.

‘Yeah, why not? It might distract me from this stupid hangover.’

Nicola took several swigs from the bottle and looked at David. He looked bleary and puffy around the eyes, but apart from that he seemed in much better shape than she felt. He’d been much drunker than her last night, hadn’t he?

‘Founded in 1178 by King William I, consecrated in 1233, declaration signed in 1320, blah, blah. Fell down gradually in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and everyone started using the stone to build their houses.’ She looked again for Amy absentmindedly. ‘That enough?’

‘I never knew that last bit, that the stone was used to build other houses. I suppose that makes sense. Wouldn’t get away with that shit these days, eh?’

They went through a gap in the wall to their right, and found themselves amongst geometric lines mown into the grass, the occasional stretch of stone stubble sticking up here and there. A small sign said ‘Cloister Foundations’. They couldn’t see Amy anywhere, so they just meandered around the cloister area, soaking up the sun like cormorants at dawn. Just then David’s mobile rang.

‘So, your mobile sometimes works, then?’ said Nicola.

He stuck his tongue out at her as he answered the phone.

‘Hello?’ he said, then, ‘Yes, that’s me.’

Nicola’s thoughts drifted off as David stood with the mobile to his ear. Her folks’ house had been chaotic this morning, Amy carrying on up and down the stairs, the television on loudly, her parents fussing around in the kitchen with Radio Two on (again, way too loud) in the background. Her lazy bastard youngest brother Andrew, the one who still had the nerve to live at home, treating their folks with casual disdain, hadn’t come home, preferring to stop over at whichever mate or girlfriend he’d conned into taking care of him. Her folks had obviously been feeding Amy sugar since dawn, judging by how hyper she’d been, and it had been a relief to get to the abbey, to let her off the leash to scoot about the place on her own. It would be a greater relief to get back to Edinburgh and chill out properly, but she was glad to be here with David, and that they’d been through so much this weekend – the booze, the snogging, the fighting – together. It made her feel as if he was a comrade, a partner in crime with regard to the whole thing.

She looked at David now as he put his mobile away. He suddenly looked a lot worse than he had five minutes ago.

‘That was Gary’s dad,’ he said, and seemed to swallow self-consciously. ‘Gary’s body was found this morning at the bottom of the cliffs. He’s in a coma, up at Ninewells in Dundee.’

It took a moment before she understood. Gary? Who they’d said goodbye to eight hours ago? But they’d been nowhere near the cliffs. Nicola’s fuzzy head couldn’t work out what it meant. She looked at David, who seemed to be about to cry, and she started to feel a knot in her throat.

‘I’d better find Amy,’ she said, looking around her with a sudden urgency.

They dropped off a reluctant Amy with her grandparents and drove to Dundee as fast as the roadworks let them.

‘You must be still drunk,’ said Nicola as they headed past golfers silhouetted against a shimmering blue sky. Oilseed rape fields threw pollen high into the air, making their eyes water and their noses run.

‘I’m fine,’ said David. He was certainly still over the limit, but that didn’t exactly bother him now. What the hell did this mean? How the fuck could Gary’s body have been found at the cliffs, when the last time they’d seen him was at the other end of town, heading in the opposite direction, and quite clearly making for his bed? He suddenly felt as if he might puke. It was too much like what happened to Colin. The drunken Saturday night, the dawn-lit farewell, the sense of easy-going hangover approaching, and now this. He couldn’t fucking stand it. Maybe he was cursed, should get away from Nicola or she’d be next. What else did Colin and Gary have in common, apart from being with him the night they fell from the cliffs? He realized as he thought this that it was stupid, that his current fragile state was making him think illogically, but he couldn’t help it. This just didn’t make any bloody sense.