James Robertson - The Fanatic

The captain of the garrison administered this business on behalf of the governor, in return for an annual salary and a percentage of the profits. The governor was the Secretary of State for Scotland, John Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale. The solan crop was worth around eighty pounds annually. But, this aside, neither he nor anybody else cared much how the captain exercised his power. If he chose, the captain could shut the prisoners in their cells and deny them access to the meagre criss-cross of paths that usually they could share with the birds and the two dozen scabby sheep that grazed the upper slopes of the Rock. He could put a stop to mutual prayers, or prevent visits from friends or family, some of whom travelled for days to reach North Berwick. There was no set of rules, no higher arbitrator to whom the prisoners could apply: the Bass fortress lay off Scotland as impregnable and cold to human comfort as a castle in the moon.

Hugh Hardie needed a ghost: one that would appear down a half-lit close at ten o’clock at night, and have people jumping out of their skins. He also needed a drink. He was seated at a table in Dawson’s, while Jackie Halkit was up at the bar getting it for him. The drink, he thought, might be business or it might be pleasure. He hoped both.

Dawson’s was a large overbright bar in Edinburgh’s Southside, that lurched between douceness and debauchery depending on the time of day. At four o’clock on a Monday afternoon in early spring it was quiet. Office workers were still at their desks; students from the university, with few exceptions, were attending lectures or dozing in the library. The juke-box was silent: the most noise in the place came from three old men settled in one corner, supping halfs-and-halfs and murmuring smug discontents at one another. One student, barely rebellious, was reading the Sun , and nursing his pint like a hospice patient, till all life had gone out of it. A woman, possibly a tourist, since she had a small rucksack beside her, was writing postcards at another table. She was drinking mineral water and to Hugh Hardie looked like she had been disapprovingly sober since the day she was born. The old men, he decided, were at that moment the liveliest patrons Dawson’s had. Himself and Jackie excepted, of course.

They were in Dawson’s because it was handy for them both. Hugh’s flat was a few streets away in Newington, and Jackie’s workplace, a small publishing house, was not far in the other direction, off the Canongate. Hugh had an idea for a book that he thought Jackie might be interested in publishing. Jackie was pretty certain already that she wouldn’t be but she hadn’t seen him for a while and she seemed to recall that she’d found his eager boyishness irritatingly attractive. Plus it gave her a good excuse to leave work early: the office was too cluttered and cramped to receive potential authors in any privacy. When she had suggested meeting in a pub on the phone, Hugh had named Dawson’s. Now she was returning from the bar with a pint for him and a gin and tonic for herself. She had insisted, in her role as interested publisher, on buying the first round.

‘Bit early for this,’ she said. ‘What the hell. Slàinte. ’

He raised his glass, souked an inch or more out of it. ‘ Slàinte. ’ It was only recently that he’d learnt that this was Gaelic for ‘health’. For years he’d said ‘slange’ thinking it was an obsure Scots term signifying ‘slam your drink down your throat and let’s get another in’. It was watching Machair the Gaelic soap opera that had enlightened him.

‘Well, good to see you,’ he said.

‘Yeah, you too. I can’t remember when I last saw you,’ she lied.

‘That Chamber of Commerce day conference on tourism and small businesses,’ he said with precision. ‘Last autumn, remember?’

‘Oh aye,’ she said. ‘That was a long time ago. And now it’s spring, and the tourists are almost upon us again.’

Simultaneously they said, ‘And how is your small business?’, and laughed. It sounded like a line from a Carry On film.

Carry on Kidding Yourself , Jackie thought. Not for the first time, she found herself entering a conversation that somehow, for her, wasn’t … well, it wasn’t authentic. It had been the same at the conference. So-called experts and consultants delivered talks on resource management strategy, maximising customer/product interface potential, tactical merchandise-redeployment awareness – it all meant nothing and had her nodding off almost immediately.

Later she and Hugh shared a joke or two at the consultants’ expense, but it was apparent that he had taken in about ten times more of what they had said. And yet he derided them, agreed with her when she dismissed them as bullshitters. She wasn’t naive: he was two-faced in a perfectly harmless way; but then, so was she; and all night maybe he was trying to get up her skirt, but she didn’t mind that. It showed initiative.

He was transparently shallow but she wasn’t sure she wanted profundity in a man. She wasn’t sure she wanted a man. She was, however, interested in the idea that Hugh might be interested.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘you tell us about your book and then I’ll tell you about my small business. Cause that’s the order they’re going to have to come in.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Is that how it is?’

‘Aye. That’s exactly how.’

‘Okay.’ He didn’t protest, didn’t even hesitate. ‘Well, you know about my ghost tours, don’t you?’

‘Of course. How are they going?’

‘Put it this way, we’re through the winter. That’s always kind of tough. The problem is, quite a lot of locals want to come on the tours but – and I can’t say I blame them – they’re not keen to wander round the Cowgate in the dark in a freezing January wind. We do a limited programme, depending on the weather and the demand. But it gets better from now on in. In July and August we could run tours every other hour if the Council would wear it. So, to answer your question, things are going all right. A healthy little number, but seasonally dependent.

‘That’s where this idea of mine comes in. I need to spread the potential income across the year. So I’ve been thinking, you know, spin-offs. The mugs and T-shirts option isn’t really an option, don’t you agree? But a book is a different proposition.’

‘The book of the tour?’ said Jackie doubtfully.

‘Exactly. Well, not exactly, no. I mean, you could just make a kind of pamphlet out of the tour script, but it wouldn’t be very long and it would need a lot of rewriting for it to work on the page. You know, you can’t have a rat running across someone’s feet every time they turn over page thirteen.’

‘You’ve got a rat that runs over people’s feet? Did you train it or something?’

‘Not a real one. A rubber rat on a string. You’ll have to come and get the full rat experience one night. It’s very atmospheric’ He paused, and Jackie wondered if he was going to offer her a free pass, but he only drew breath before breenging on with the sales-pitch.

‘Anyway, I had in mind something a bit more substantial than just a twenty-page pamphlet. A proper paperback stuffed full of Edinburgh’s haunted and macabre past. There’s tons of stuff, Jackie, as I’m sure you know, and a big market of people who want to learn about it. Or get scared silly, in an unthreatening kind of way. It’s not as if I’m the only person operating ghost tours after all.’

‘You certainly are not. You can’t move around St Giles in the summer for folk like you trying to flog their wares to the tourists: what with all the ghoulies and ghosties and body-snatchers and stranglers, you’d think Edinburgh history was one long overflowing bloodbath.’