Lunan had started at the age of sixteen with a slim paperback. He could still remember the moment he saw it jutting out from a box of unsorted stock on the floor of a second-hand bookshop. It was the cover that drew him, a tangerine-tinted studio shot of a thin man with shadows for eyes. Murray had known nothing about Lunan’s poetry or his ill-starred life, but he had to have the book.
‘Looks like a baby-killer, doesn’t he?’ The man behind the counter had said when Murray handed over his fifty pence. ‘Still, that was the seventies for you, a lot of it about.’
Once he owned the book Murray had been strangely indifferent to its contents, almost as if he were afraid they might be a let-down. He’d propped it on the chest of drawers in the bedroom he shared with his brother until eleven-year-old Jack had complained to their dad that the man’s non-existent eyes were staring at him and Murray had been ordered to put it somewhere where it wouldn’t give people nightmares.
He’d rediscovered the book the following year, when he was packing to go to university, and thrown it in his rucksack, almost on a whim. The paperback had languished on the under-stocked bookshelf in his bed-sit through freshers’ week and into most of the following year. It was exam time, a long night into studying, when he’d found himself reaching for the poems. Murray supposed, when he bothered to think about it, that he was looking for a distraction. If so, he’d found one. He’d sat at his desk reading and re-reading Archie Lunan’s first and only poetry collection until morning. It was an enchantment which had quietly shadowed Dr Murray Watson in his toil through academe, and now at last he was free to steep himself in it.
It was after six when Murray stepped out from the National Library. Somewhere a piper was hoiching out a tune for the tourists. The screech of the bagpipes cut in and out of the traffic sounds; the grumble of car engines, the low diesel growl of taxis and unoiled shriek of bus brakes. The noise and August brightness were an assault after the gloom of the small back room. He took his sunglasses from their case and swapped them for his everyday pair. A seagull careened into the middle of the road, diving towards a discarded poke of chips. Murray admired the bird’s near-vertical take-off as it swooped up into the air narrowly missing a bus, its prize clamped firmly in its beak.
It dawned on him that he was hungry. He hadn’t eaten since the Twix he’d had for breakfast on the Glasgow to Edinburgh Express early that morning. He crossed the street, pausing to buy a Big Issue from a neat-pressed vendor who readjusted his baseball cap when Murray declined his change. There was a faint scent of salt in the breeze blowing through the city from the Firth of Forth. It suited Murray’s mood. His mind still half on the island where Archie had been born, Murray began to walk briskly towards the city centre. The Edinburgh Fringe was well under way. The town had taken on the atmosphere of a medieval fête and it was hard negotiating a path through the crush of tourists, rival ghost-tour operators, performers and temporary street stalls that swamped the High Street. He sidestepped the spit-spattled Heart of Midlothian, at the same time avoiding a masked Death, cowled in unseasonably warm black velvet. On other days the crush and stretched smiles of performers trumpeting their shows might have irritated Murray, but today their edge of cheerful hysteria seemed to echo his own optimism. He turned into Cockburn Street, his feet unconsciously stepping to the rhythm of a busking drum troupe, each stride on the beat, precise as a policeman on duty at an Orange Walk. Murray accepted leaflets shoved at him for shows he had no intention of seeing, still thinking about the papers in the box, and keeping his eyes peeled for a chippy.
In the end he settled for pie and beans washed down by a pint of 80/- in the Doric. He ate at one of the high stools by the bar, his eyes fixed on the television mounted on the wall above the gantry, watching the newsreader relaying headlines he couldn’t hear. The screen flashed to soldiers in desert fatigues on patrol then to a crease-eyed correspondent packed into a flak jacket, the background behind him half sand, half blue sky, like a child’s what-I-did-on-my-holiday drawing.
Murray slid his hand into his rucksack, brought out his notebook and read again the names he had copied from the red corduroy address book, wishing to God it had been a diary.
Tamsker
Saffron
Ray – will you be my sunshine?
It was a misnomer to call it an address book. It had contained no addresses, no telephone numbers, simply lists of unfamiliar names occasionally accompanied by phrases of nonsense. If he knew the identity of even one of them he’d have something to work with, but he was clueless, the knot still pulled tight. Murray folded the words back into his pocket, feeling the pleasure of possession, the secret thrill of a man on the brink of a discovery that might yet elude him.
His plate was cleared, his pint nearly done. He tipped it back and placed the empty glass on the bar, shaking his head when the barman asked him if he’d like another. It was time to go and do his duty.
Chapter Two
THERE WAS ALREADY a crush of people beyond the glass front of the Fruitmarket Gallery. Murray eyed them as he made his way towards the entrance. He couldn’t see the exhibits from here, but the bar was busy. He paused and took in the exhibition poster, the name JACK WATSON shining out at him from the trio of artists. He lingered outside, savouring the rightness of it all, suddenly wishing he’d bought a camera so he could record the event for posterity. When he looked up he noticed a young woman wearing an orange dress gathered in curious origami folds gazing at him from beyond the glass. Murray half returned her smile then quick-glanced away. He ran a hand through his hair and fumbled in his pocket for the ticket Lyn had sent him, getting a sudden vision of it tucked inside last month’s New York Review of Books somewhere midway down in the pile of papers that had colonised his couch. He hesitated for a moment then stepped from the damp coolness of the bridge-shadowed street into the warm hubbub of bodies and chatter, steeling himself for the embarrassment of getting Lyn or Jack to vouch for him. But no one challenged his right to be there. Murray wondered, as he helped himself to a glass of red and a leaflet explaining the artists’ intentions, how many people were here to view the art and how many had been drawn in by the vision of a free bar.
He was scanning the paper for Jack’s name as he turned, glass in hand. His rucksack jarred and a little wine slopped onto his cuff. ‘God, I’m sorry.’
The woman he had jolted glanced down at the clever folds of her dress.
‘You’re fine, no harm done.’
‘Are you sure?’ Her arms were bare and freckled, her nails painted the same tangy colour as the fabric. Murray realised that he was staring at the point in her midriff where the folds met and felt his face flush. ‘I wouldn’t want to spoil your dress, it looks expensive.’
She laughed. There was a small scar in the centre of her upper lip where long ago an operation had left its mark.
‘It was that.’ She had a Northern Irish accent, the kind that sometimes drew comparisons between harsh politics and harsh brogues. It sounded cool and amused. ‘You’re here to see Jack.’
Murray realised he was still wearing his sunglasses and took them off. The world blended into smudged brightness and the girl’s face slipped out of focus. He fumbled for his other pair, trying not to squint.
‘I guess that’s why we’re all here.’ He found his specs and slid them on. Everything sharpened. He held out his hand. ‘I’m Jack’s brother, Murray.’
‘I know.’ She took his hand and shook it. ‘Cressida. You don’t remember me, do you?’
Not for the first time Murray wished his brain were as efficient as his computer. How could he retain a minutia of dates, form and verse but dispense with the memory
