Alexander Smith - Unbearable Lightness of Scones

Then Angus saw that Lard’s face was quite white and that his vast bulk was beginning to sway. He’ll crush me if he falls, he thought, and moved to the side of the steps, pressing himself against the flimsy barrier of the badly maintained railings. That action saved him from sure and certain injury as Lard suddenly toppled forward and half-slid, half-bounced down the steep set of stone steps.

When Lard reached the bottom, Angus rushed forward, to be joined by Matthew at the side of the inert, prone figure.

“Tell Big Lou to call an ambulance,” said Angus quickly. “And then come back out here and help me shift him. We don’t want his head lower than his body. All the blood will drain down.”

Matthew stepped over Lard and dashed into the café. Big Lou had already abandoned the bar and was coming towards him. She had her cordless telephone in her hand.

“Call an ambulance,” shouted Matthew. “Quick.”

Cyril barked. He was standing outside, staring at Lard on the ground and at Angus kneeling beside him. Something had happened in the world of men, but he was unsure what it was and if he was expected to do anything. To be on the safe side, he raised his head and gave a howl. That would cover an eventuality that was looking increasingly likely to him.

Matthew and Angus now man-handled Lard’s trunk and legs down the last few steps so that they were at the same level as his head and chest. He lay there on the cold stone, his mouth open, his eyes staring up at the patch of sky above. There was no movement.

“Artificial respiration,” said Matthew. “I’m going to apply mouth-to-mouth.”

Angus nodded. “And shouldn’t we thump his chest?” he asked.

“We could give it a try,” said Matthew. “But he looks a goner to me.”

They did their best. At one point Matthew thought that he detected some movement within Lard, but it proved just to be a great belch, which came up from his stomach, a last protest against the Glaswegian diet that had been directed into that long-suffering organ. It was a posthumous belch, and it was followed by silence.

A few minutes later, the ambulance arrived, and two men, each carrying some sort of box, came dashing down the steps.

“All right, boys,” said one of the ambulance men. “We’ll take over.”

They worked on Lard for more than ten minutes, ventilating him and applying a defibrillator to his chest. When the current was switched on, Lard’s body gave a twitch, but nothing more, and was once again still. They tried several times, looked at the heart tracing on the machine, and then exchanged glances.

“Did you see what happened?” asked one of the ambulance men, feeling for a pulse under Lard’s chin and then shaking his head.

“He gasped,” said Angus. “He was just above me on the steps and he gasped. It was a strange sound. Then he tumbled over and hit his head on the way down.”

The ambulance man nodded. “His heart had probably stopped by the time he hit the ground,” he said. “Big chap like this. That’s the way they go.” He paused. “Friend of yours?”

Angus hesitated. Was Lard his friend? He knew very little about him, and what little he knew was hardly favourable. But now he was mortal clay – that which we all become sooner or later. And if there is such a thing as an immortal soul – and Angus thought there was – then Lard had had such a one as the rest of us; a flawed one, perhaps, but a soul nonetheless. He had said something about his weans. So there were children. And a Mrs. O’Connor. And a life of plans and ambitions and fears – just the same as the rest of us.

“Yes,” he said. “He was a friend of mine.” He looked at Matthew. “And of you too, Matthew?”

Matthew nodded. “Yes, he was my friend too.”

“I’m very sorry,” said the ambulance man. “But I can tell you, he won’t have known what hit him. Out like a light. If that’s any consolation.”

It was, and Angus thought of those words as he helped the ambulance men to roll Lard onto the stretcher and carry him up the stone steps. “We’re not meant to allow you to help,” said the other ambulance man. “Health and safety regulations, you know. But you boys were his friend and maybe he would have liked it.”

“He would,” said Angus. “He would have liked it.”

And he thought for a moment how stupid our society had become, that its nanny-like concern for risk should prevent one man helping another to take a dead friend up the steps of Big Lou’s coffee bar. How silly; how petty; how dehumanising. And when they reached the top, he looked up at the sky, which had been overcast earlier on, but which now was clearing. There was high cloud, white cloud banked up to wide expanses of blue, and Angus wondered, curiously, what an artist might have made of this scene, Bellini perhaps, or Moretto. The angels would descend – well-built, strong angels – to carry Lard upwards to his rest; a man who had been undeserving in this world welcomed into the next, where human wrongs are forgiven and the heaviest become light.

Matthew and Angus gave lengthy statements to the police. Photographs were taken, measurements made, chalk marks scratched on the steps to trace the overweight Glaswegian’s fatal plunge. And then the police, having been satisfied that they had all the necessary details, went on their way, leaving Matthew, Angus and Big Lou to comfort one another in the coffee bar.

At the end of an hour of going over what had happened, Big Lou announced that she did not wish to keep the coffee bar open that day. She wanted to go home, to recover from the shock. Matthew, looking at his watch, realised that he would have to go back to the gallery. The “Back Soon” notice was mildly misleading even on a normal day; now it was extremely so.

“Come and have lunch with me,” said Big Lou to Angus. “Come down to the flat. We can carry on talking there.”

This invitation was just what Angus wanted. He could not face going back to his own flat, to his empty studio; the witnessing of a tragedy, even a small one, makes us want the company of others, makes us want not to be alone.

“I’ll come,” he said to Big Lou.

They said goodbye to Matthew and began to make their way down Dundas Street towards Canonmills. Everything seemed so normal, so everyday, thought Angus, and yet only a few hours before they had seen a man snatched from this life without warning. In the midst of life we are in death. Angus remembered the words from the Book of Common Prayer – those grave, resonant words. “Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower…” Lard had been cut down like a flower, before his very eyes. We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. That was as true of Lard as it was of anyone. Such powerful words – such true words; language – and life – stripped to its bare essentials.

He looked at Big Lou, walking beside him; at that solid, reliable woman who had suffered so much.

“I feel very raw inside,” he said to her. “I hardly knew him, but it’s been such a shock.”

She reached over and touched him lightly on the arm. She had never done that before, but she did it now.

“I know what you mean,” she said. “I couldn’t carry on working today after I saw what happened to that poor man.”

They walked on in silence. Now they were at the bottom of Brandon Street and not far from Big Lou’s flat. Angus had never been there before, but had imagined it. It was full of books, he believed – the stock that had been in the bookshop when she had bought it and turned it into a coffee bar.

“I’m looking forward to seeing your books, Lou,” he said, as they started to climb the stairs to her flat, which was on the top floor.