James Robertson - The Fanatic

‘Well, as I said, if you can’t make it sometimes, we can negotiate. Get a stand-in. But I need someone to start straight away, and believe me, you’d be great for the part. Look, I’ll tell you what. Here’s an incentive: if you do it seven nights a week without missing one, I’ll round the cash up to forty quid. If you miss a night, you only get paid for the nights you work. That’s pretty fair, isn’t it?’

Jackie snorted and Hugh Hardie gave her what she assumed was supposed to be a withering glance. Some long and complicated process seemed to be going on in Carlin’s brain. Eventually he said, ‘I’m no sure.’

‘What aren’t you sure about? Talk to me, Andrew.’

‘The haill idea. It’s no the money. It’s the idea.’

Hardie made a shrugging gesture. ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’

‘Well, that’s whit I’m no sure aboot. This guy Major Weir. You jist packaged him up in ten seconds and haund it him ower. Life’s no like that. I mean, d’ye ken whit ye’re daein wi him?’

‘He’s just a character, that’s all.’

‘You said he was real.’

‘Well, yeah, but he’s been dead three hundred years. Now he’s just a character. A “real character”, you might say.’ Hardie laughed a little nervously. ‘Anyway, we take the people round the places he lived in, tell them about the past. Not just him, Burke and Hare, Deacon Brodie, all that stuff. I’ll take you on the route and you can see for yourself what we do with him, as you put it.’

‘That’d be guid,’ said Carlin. ‘I would need tae know, ken.’

‘Look,’ said Hugh, ‘I haven’t got time to show you the ropes if you’re not going to take the job. I need you to start this week. Tonight if possible. Tomorrow definitely. So, come on, how about it? Meet at the Heart of Midlothian at, say, eleven tomorrow morning and take it from there, eh?’

Carlin drank more of his pint. ‘And I’m like him, am I?’ he said.

‘The spitting image,’ said Hugh Hardie.

‘Show me the ropes then,’ Carlin said. ‘When I’m sure, I might no dae it. But I’ll dae it while I’m no sure aboot it.’

Although this was delivered in the same flat monotone, Hardie interpreted it as a joke of some sort and laughed loudly. Maybe it was relief. ‘Brilliant!’ he said, raising his glass. ‘ Slàinte. ’

Carlin didn’t respond. Jackie Halkit, raising her own drink instinctively, noticed that his glass, which only a couple of minutes ago had been almost full, was now down to the dregs. She hadn’t been aware of him drinking in the interim.

‘So what about the book, Jackie?’ Hardie turned and asked. ‘Is it a project?’

‘If you make it one,’ she said. She was aware of Carlin swivelling on his stool, standing up. Maybe he’s going to buy a round, she thought, and laughed into herself. She dragged her mind back to answering Hugh’s question. ‘As far as I’m concerned, at this point in space and time, no, it isn’t,’ she said.

‘Great,’ said Hardie. ‘It’s inspiring to work with you too.’ For a moment she thought he was angry at her, but then he gave her that winning smile. She had a sudden image of herself, seated in a pub late one afternoon, her consciousness being worked over by two men, both of whom intrigued her though she found them, for different reasons, slightly repellent. She felt she needed to get out in the sunlight.

‘Hey,’ Hugh said, ‘maybe I could get him to write it. Being a historian and everything.’

She brought herself back. ‘Where is he?’ she asked Hugh. Carlin had disappeared.

‘Gone for a slash, I assume,’ said Hugh. But at the end of five minutes, and after Hugh had been on a scouting expedition to the toilet, it became clear that Carlin had left the pub.

‘Fucking marvellous!’ said Hugh. ‘I mean, what’s that all about? Is he going to do it? Did we make arrangements? I don’t even know where the guy lives. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, Jackie.’

‘Perfect for the part, I think you said. Don’t expect any sympathy from me, you rat. I did try to warn you.’

‘But he is perfect. I really want him scaring the shit out of my tourists. Do you not know where he lives?’

‘No. And I don’t want to either. But you did make arrangements, even if they didn’t seem very definite to you. That’s one of the things I mind about him, you only needed to say something once and it lodged, it stuck there in his head and he never forgot it.

‘One time when I was a student, someone sort of half-suggested we all go for a drink after the last class before we went home for Christmas, in Sandy Bell’s it was supposed to be, but it never came to anything, people just sloped off in different directions muttering cheerios. But then a couple of the girls caught up with me and said, Come on, let’s get pissed, so we did, just the three of us, we hit the Royal Mile and had a right laugh.

‘We all stayed in different flats over in Marchmont, so we were heading that way at the end of the evening and one of them says, Right, in here quick, one for the road before we get raped across the Meadows, and it was Sandy Bell’s, and would you believe it, the bastard was in there, cool as you like, propping up the bar listening to the folkies, and he turns to us and says. Well, I thought yous were never going to show. And we had a round but the fun had gone out of us like balloons, we just all stood around in a circle watching each other drink, him with his eyes on us all the time, and then he walked with us home across the Meadows cause he stayed up in Bruntsfield somewhere. I tell you, we were all that freaked we had to lie we all stayed in the same street cause none of us wanted to be the last one alone with him.’

‘Now that’s scary,’ said Hugh Hardie. ‘Creeps that hang around all night on the basis of a throwaway suggestion. I hate that kind of no-hoper stuff. But you can’t get away from it, he’s an ideal match for Major Weir. They might have been made for each other. So, Heart of Midlothian at eleven, was that what we agreed? Do you think he’ll show?’

‘Unless he’s changed in six years,’ said Jackie. ‘Which I don’t think. Seems to me he just got weirder than he was already. You turn up there on time, I’ll bet he’s waiting on you.’

Their glasses were empty. ‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘I’ve got stuff to do tonight.’

‘What stuff?’

‘Lassies’ stuff. You know, cleaning the bath, reducing the ironing pile, that kind of everyday homely stuff.’

‘God. Glad I’m not a lassie. Sure you don’t want another?’

‘No thanks, Hugh. But – and I know this is going to sound pathetically girlie too – what I would appreciate is if you’d just get me down the street a wee bit. I’ve got this feeling about Andrew Carlin. I don’t want him following me home or anything.’

‘Come on ,’ said Hardie, looking at his watch. ‘Six o’ clock. It’s kind of early for stalking.’ Then he saw that she wasn’t joking. ‘Yeah, sure, no problem. Where do you stay again?’

‘New Town,’ she said. ‘Just chum me a block or two, if you don’t mind.’

‘I’d chum you all the way,’ he said, ‘but I’m going to have to do some haunting tonight, I guess, so I’d better go home too, get myself organised. The traffic’ll have died down a bit by now, though, I’ll flag you a taxi.’

‘I’ll walk,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine. It’s just – seeing him again.’

Out on the street they had to negotiate past a drunk man coming towards them. He lurched at Hugh, who put a hand out defensively to prevent him falling into his arms. The raincoat slid greasily under his palm.

‘Dae I no ken ye fae somewhere?’ said the drunk man. He looked old; his jaw bristled with sharp white hairs and was shiny wet with slavers.