coming back. Did you say something?
Yes.
Arnold jiggled his car keys. Last boat at 11, he said.
I’ll get a cab.
Come on.
No really Arnie, it’s great of you, I appreciate it, but I’m fine, I’m doing all right, taxis are good, they’re cheap, they’re reliable, they’re fast. Fast enough, I mean. Not too – yeah, fast enough. Don’t want to have you going out of your way.
He looked hurt. He fidgeted with his keys and looked around. He did seem astoundingly calm and sober for an Edinburgh pub on a Friday night. Con, he said, I don’t understand you. We’ve been drinking in this place for the past two years and we both know where we go at closing time. It’s not like we’re strangers. What is the deal with these taxis? D’you not get embarrassed when you’re getting out of the cab on the quayside and you see me driving up the ramp? D’you think I avoid the moon deck bar on a Friday night cause I like the Stoker’s Lounge better?
I had wondered about that. My face went the colour of the carpet in the Stoker’s Lounge. It’d been stupid to think he hadn’t noticed me trying to avoid him on the boat all this time.
I’m sorry, Arnie, I said. I don’t like the way you drive.
I hadn’t meant to say that. Anyway, he was alive, was he not?
I know, said Arnold. But I’m more careful now.
No you’re not. I’ve seen the way you go down the Queensferry Road.
That’s just the way it looks. That is me being careful. I don’t hit anything. I never hit anything. I make sure now. I’ve made sure ever since that time. It’s a science, it’s dynamics. Anyway, there’s plenty of time, there’s no need to hurry.
The clock said 10.35, i.e. 10.25, so he was right, there was plenty of time. And even though I’d seen him shoot past and slot his car at 60 through a space you wouldn’t try to park in, I’d never actually driven with him.
If you’re so worried about the taxi, said Arnold, you can give me a fiver if you like. He grinned.
A fiver? To Queensferry? I could get to Inverness on a fiver. And still have money left over for a deep-fried Brie supper and a chilled Vimto.
Make it ten then.
We went out to the car. We hadn’t got there before he’d hit me with some new apocrypha which might’ve made me change my mind if I hadn’t been thinking along the same lines, so much that I was hardly aware he’d said it.
The dice you’d need to roll to reflect the chances of your being involved in a car accident on any one trip, he said, would have so many faces that without a powerful microscope it would be indistinguishable from a perfect sphere.
What was that? I said, fastening the seatbelt. He repeated it while he started the car.
Bet you didn’t sell that to News International, I said.
No. I just thought of that one. It’s not for sale.
Private apocrypha, eh.
He didn’t say anything. That didn’t bother me because I was looking at the digital clock on his dashboard. We were out on the road and moving. Arnold was driving at just under the speed limit in built-up areas. Cars were passing us. The clock said 10.35.
Your clock’s wrong, I said.
I know, he said.
Right.
They were going to change the name to Kingsferry, said Arnold. In honour of the king who died falling off the cliff, you know, trying to catch the boat late at night.
That’s not such a good one, Arnie. Don’t think you’d get far with that.
It’s true! I’m off work now. No apocrypha in my free time. It’s true.
Why would they call it Kingsferry? They didn’t start calling Dallas Dead Presidentville after Kennedy got shot there.
Because that’s what it’s about. It’s not about folk crossing the river.
It is as far as I’m concerned. They could call them South Ferry Ferry and North Ferry Ferry and that’d make sense to me.
No, Con, said Arnold, turning to look at me, and even though we were still trundling along at 30, I wanted him to turn back and keep his eyes on the road. He looked worried for me, as if I was about to go out alone into the world without the things I needed to know to survive. If it was about folk crossing the river there’d be a bridge. A Forth road bridge. They could easily build one. It’d be open round the clock and no-one would ever have to be racing to get the last boat again.
We’re not racing, though, ’cause we’ve got plenty of time.
OK, but folk do. And they’re supposed to be all into public safety. I tell you what it is, it’s put there deliberately. It’s a deliberate exception. Because they know you can’t resist it. You want it. You want a place in the country where you can be provoked into taking a risk without going out and looking for it too hard.
No you don’t.
You do Con. You know you do. There just aren’t enough real risks on the go, and you don’t want to go rock climbing or bungee jumping or kayaking, cause you’re getting on, and it’s too much trouble, and they take all the risk out of it anyway, it’s like a fairground ride, and you don’t want to go out looking for a fight, and violence in the pictures is just a wank … so you sit in the pub and you wait until you’re about to miss the ferry.
Don’t talk this way, Arnie, it’s not good.
It’s not that you want to die. You want to live. More than anything, you want to live, you want to have even just the next five minutes of your life, never mind seeing the sun come up again. Only there’s something that comes in between wanting one and wanting the other, it’s like a separation, you start believing two different things at the same time, that if you die, it’d be the end, and that you can die without actually dying. That you can watch it. That you can do it again. That it’d be interesting. You really believe that. It’s strange. I don’t understand it. D’you understand it?
A horn opened up behind us and headlights flared through the rear windscreen. The car behind pulled out sharply and overtook with a roar of contempt. Our speed had dropped to 25. So far the only way we were going to die tonight was getting spannered by a fellow motorist. I wanted to talk about going faster. I wanted to talk about what happened to Arnold’s wife. I didn’t want to upset him.
I’m not into the risk, I said. I was really wanting to get a lift with Siobhan and sit with her in the moon deck bar in the big white ship and go home.
Arnold didn’t say anything. I hadn’t thought it was possible to drive any slower in high gear but it seemed we were slipping back to about bicycle pace. I remembered he’d been after Siobhan just after he’d got out, and I remembered he’d been sitting down there in the yeasty fug of the Stoker’s Lounge for two years while we’d been up there watching the lights of passing ships through the rain on the glass roof and the moon wax and wane
