James Robertson - The Fanatic

‘Don’t be sulky, Jackie. Get him over and we’ll toast your alma mater. Why ever not?’

‘Well, to be honest, he’s a bit weird. He was a postgraduate when I was doing final year Honours. He sat in on a course I was doing – First World War or something. The guy running the course was supervising his PhD. But he dropped out – never finished it as far as I know.’

‘Shame,’ said Hugh. ‘Get him over, won’t you?’

‘Wait, I said. He was weird. Gave me the creeps.’

‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re just writing him a great CV. He has got something, hasn’t he? To look at, I mean. That woman over there can’t stop checking him out. He’s disturbing her. Don’t you see?’

‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ said Jackie. ‘All the women in the class felt the same. You tried to avoid his eye. Not that he actually ever did anything, you understand.’

‘Some people have that, don’t they? That amazing ability to upset other people just by being themselves. They don’t have to do anything.’

The old men, who had glanced at the man when he came in, had not paid him any attention since. Hugh, who made his living by exploiting how different people reacted to what they saw, noticed this and liked it. The old men were never going to be his customers. Jackie and the tourist were the ones who mattered, and they had the right responses. The barman, who probably saw the guy regularly, wasn’t bothered by him. The student seemed to have fallen asleep.

‘What’s his name?’ Hugh asked.

Jackie shook her head.

‘It’s all right, I won’t shout it out or anything. I won’t embarrass you.’

‘Carlin,’ she said. ‘Alan, I think. No, Andrew. Andrew Carlin.’

‘Andrew!’ shouted Hugh. The others in the bar stared at him, and the student woke with a jerk. ‘Andrew Carlin! Over here!’

‘You bastard,’ said Jackie.

‘Sorry,’ said Hugh. ‘No gain without pain.’

Carlin sat with a quarter-pint in front of him, and said nothing. Hardie had jumped up to buy him a drink as soon as the one he had was less than half full. ‘Less than half full, rather than more than half empty, that’s the kind of guy I am,’ said Hardie jovially and without a trace of irony. ‘What is that, eighty shilling?’ Carlin looked at him without expression, and nodded once. When Hardie went to the bar, there was an awkward silence between the other two. Jackie had been badgered earlier by Hugh into reminiscing about the class she and Carlin had both attended. The responses from Carlin had been monosyllabic. Now she tried a different tack.

‘So what have you been up to since I saw you last? It must be, what, six years? I mind you gave up on the PhD. Can’t say I blame you, I was scunnered of History after one degree. Well, maybe not scunnered, just tired.’

‘Aye,’ said Carlin. He gazed at her. She wasn’t sure if he was merely acknowledging what she’d said or agreeing with it. She was aware again of the piercing stare that had been so oppressive in the class, and lowered her eyes. Even as she did so she felt she’d conceded a small victory to him. She made herself look back up, and found him off guard, and saw something she hadn’t expected. A woundedness? Damage? Fear? She couldn’t tell.

‘Six years, I’d say,’ said Carlin. ‘Mair or less. Whit I’ve been up tae: this and that.’

Jackie thought, Christ, is he on something? She wished Hugh would hurry up.

‘Are you working?’ she asked.

‘In whit sense?’

‘You know, in a working sense. In a job sense.’ She felt herself growing angry at him. She wasn’t a wee undergraduate any more, she ought not to be intimidated by his weirdness.

‘Na,’ he said, ‘no in that sense.’

Hardie returned. ‘There you go, mate, get that down you,’ he said chummily. Jackie cringed. Carlin shifted the new pint behind the unfinished one but otherwise said nothing.

‘Have you got a job at the moment, Andrew?’ Hardie asked.

‘She jist asked me that.’

‘Oh, has she been filling you in then?’

‘Has she been filling me in? I don’t think so.’

‘I’ve got a job for someone who needs a bit of extra cash,’ said Hardie. ‘The pay’s not great but the work’s steady and there’s not much to it. I think it would really suit you.’

More than you might bargain for, Jackie thought, you’ll end up with corpses all over the Old Town.

‘I run these ghost tours, okay? Three a day, seven days a week. The last one of the day, that’s a bit special. I charge the punters more for it and it always sells out. Well, it does in the summer anyway. It’s a bit of fun, but a bit scary too, right? Plus we do some special effects in the half-light. That’s where you come in. If you’re interested.’

Carlin inclined his head. He might have been encouraging Hugh Hardie to continue or he might have been falling asleep.

‘I need someone to play the part of a ghost. As soon as you came through that door, before Jackie even said she knew you, isn’t that right Jackie, I said you were perfect. You see, you look like someone. A guy called Major Weir, the Wizard of the West Bow. Have you heard of him?’

Carlin shook his head. When he spoke his voice was slow and toneless. ‘Is he like, real? A real person?’

‘Oh, definitely. Was real, yeah, for sure. Basically he and his sister Grizel, well, they were kind of Puritans, you know, the tall black hat brigade, Bible-thumping Calvinists.’

‘I ken whit Puritans are,’ said Carlin.

‘Good. Great. Well, anyway, one day they got found out. They were complete hypocrites. Satanists, I guess. They used to meet up with the Devil and stuff. And they were shagging each other. Grizel – isn’t that a brilliant name? – was kind of out of it, she was just a crazy old woman, but Major Weir, he was a baad guy. Not only did he shag his sister, he shagged cows and anything else that moved.’ Hardie broke off. ‘Of course, I’m paraphrasing. We don’t put it quite like this on the tour.’

‘I should think not,’ said Jackie. ‘Is this the man you want Andrew to impersonate? I take it he doesn’t have to be too realistic’ She didn’t understand herself: one minute she was disturbed by Carlin, the next she felt he needed protecting. She noticed how he sat: hunched, or coiled. When Hugh’s expansive gestures got too close, he seemed to shrink back. And yet this was less like a timid reaction than like, say, the natural movement of a reed in the wind.

‘No,’ Hugh said, ‘for the purposes of the tour, our ghost just does a bit of straightforward spookery. Appears suddenly at the ends of closes, that kind of thing. The Major got burnt for witchcraft and for years after that people were supposed to see him in the Old Town, round where Victoria Street now is and down the Cowgate, so that’s what we’ve got him doing – revisiting his old haunts, ha ha! I supply all the props – cloak, staff and wig. Oh, and a rat, but I’ll tell you about that later. If you’re interested I’ll walk you through the part. On location, as it were. So, waddya think?’

‘Every night?’ said Carlin.

‘Yeah, but if you can’t manage the occasional night that’s okay, as long as I know in advance. It’s only an hour and a half. How about it?’

‘Whit’s the pay?’

‘Fiver a night. I know it’s not much, but for an hour or so, hey, that’s not a bad rate these days. Well above the minimum wage, if there was one. Oh, and nothing to come off it either. Cash in hand, thirty-five quid every week, no questions asked. Are you on benefit? Forget I said that. Waddya think?’

Carlin finally drained his first pint and started on the second. ‘It’s a commitment,’ he said after a while. ‘Every night, like.’