tae sell tae the tourists.’
‘Don’t come the bag wi that fuckin shite. Since when was that pricktugger a fuckin culture expert? And onywey, whit kinna basis is that for an economy? Whit gets sellt tae the tourists is an unreal picture o an unreal country that’s never gaun tae get tae fuckin grips wi itsel until it runs its ain affairs.’
‘Independence? The likes o Hardie would run a mile. We’d be like Switzerland. Dead borin, only withoot the money.’
‘Noo I ken ye’re playin the Devil’s advocate. Don’t fuckin mock the Swiss. You’ve been there. It’s a clean country, everybody’s got jobs, everybody uses the trains and they don’t fuckin go tae war wi onybody. The Swiss fuckin ken where it’s at, if ye ask me.’
Carlin turned the backs of his legs to the fire again. ‘Your language,’ he said. ‘Away and wash yer mooth oot wi soap.’
Carlin twitched the nylon fishing-line to make sure that the rat was free to run. He knew it would be but he couldn’t stop himself. He felt the weight of the rat shift slightly at the far end of the line, just a fraction of an inch, and let his fingers go slack again. Then he waited for the people to come.
He was huckered against a wall halfway down a steep close between Victoria Street and the Cowgatehead. There was a dog-leg at this point, so that anyone descending could not see him until they turned the corner, and could not see the second half of the close until they turned again at the place where he was standing.
He was wearing a long black cloak, fastened at the neck, over his ordinary clothes. When he walked the cloak billowed and swirled around him, but now, as he stood still, it hung limp and heavy like a shroud. Leaning next to him against the wall was a black wooden staff, as tall as himself, and surmounted by a misshapen knucklebone head. A straggly wig of wispy auld man’s grey hair fell about his neck, framing the ghastly whiteness of his face. The previous ghost, Hugh Hardie had said on the run-through that morning, had used clown make-up, but he didn’t think Carlin needed it.
The close was little frequented by locals. It was not on an obvious route to a pub or other destination, and its length and dinginess gave it an unhealthy reputation. It was used by drunks and destitutes as a urinal more than as a throughway. Tourists were seen in it only if they had got lost. Or were on a ghost tour.
The nylon line ran from his hand along the ground to a hole in the wall a few yards up the close, just before the dog-leg was reached. When the tour party reached this spot, the guide would bring everybody to a halt, and describe the living conditions of this part of Edinburgh in the seventeenth century. Hardie had rehearsed this with Carlin earlier. The guide would talk about the lack of sanitation and ask his listeners to step carefully. ‘This close was once called the Stinking Close,’ he’d say, ‘and it still in some respects is deserving of the name.’ ‘That,’ said Hardie, ‘is your cue, your amber light.’
Carlin’s first task was to pull the large rubber rat, which was secured to the fishing-line through a hole in its mouth, across the ground and round the corner, causing alarms and excursions among the tourists as it skited over their feet.
As soon as he’d reeled in the rat, he had to move on. The guide would usher the people on round the dog-leg. They were supposed to get a glimpse of swirling cloak and a shadowy figure carrying a long staff disappearing down the lower part of the close. ‘At the entrance onto the Cowgatehead,’ Hardie stressed, ‘stop and wait for a few seconds. You’ll be silhouetted in the archway. Turn and glare back up at them. It’ll look brilliant.’
Meanwhile the guide would tell them the tale of Major Weir, pointing out that he had lodged just off this very close with his sister Grizel. He would describe how he had confessed his terrible crimes before a shocked assemblage of fellow Puritans; how he had been tried and convicted of incest, bestiality and witchcraft, and burnt at the stake on the road to Leith; and how poor, mad Grizel had tried to take off all her clothes on the Grassmarket scaffold before she was hanged, just a few yards from where they were now standing. Ever after, the Major and she would be collected at night in a black coach drawn by six flame-eyed black horses, and driven out of the town to Dalkeith, there to meet with their master the Devil. At other times the Major’s stick, with the satyr-heads carved on it which seemed to change shape and expression, would float through the dark wynds and closes, going like a servant before him and rapping on the doors of the terrified inhabitants.
‘As you have seen,’ the guide would say, ‘Major Weir lives on. Perhaps, as we journey through these old dark corners of Edinburgh, you may catch another glimpse of him …’
And so they would. They’d turn into the Cowgate and see a tall, cloaked man moving silently along the wall ahead of them. They would follow him as the guide told more stories of ghosts and murders and other half-hidden horrors. They would be brought, by and by, back towards the High Street, where their tour had started, by a series of narrow stairs and closes. And at the last turn, those at the front of the party would find themselves staring up at the looming, gash-faced Major Weir, glowering disdainfully down his nose at them – just for a second or two, and then he’d be gone, and the adventure would be over. Tell your friends,’ the guide would conclude, ‘but – don’t tell them everything. Leave them to be unpleasantly surprised.’
Hardie had handed Carlin the props – the wig, the cloak, the staff and the rat. ‘You hang onto them in the meantime,’ he’d said. ‘But don’t lose them. The other guy used to carry a plastic bag with him, to put the stuff in when he’d finished. He said he felt a bit of a prat walking home otherwise. But there’s not much you can do about the stick. Still, should stand you in good stead if anybody gives you any hassle, eh? Now, the tour kicks off at nine o’clock. It usually gets here at about half-past, but you’ll need to be in position ten minutes before that. And sometimes there’s a bit of rubbish lying about, you know, some broken glass or a few old cans. If you can kick anything like that to one side I’d appreciate it. I’m all for realism but we don’t want people stepping in anything too nasty.’
Now Carlin waited. This was playing at history. He should chuck it. But it had kind of happened upon him, the whole thing. Because that was the way of it, he’d let it go on. In any case, he wanted to find out why he was like Major Weir. If he was like him.
The moor was a place of refuge. The boy saw that. In its endless browns and greens you could become nothing, be hidden from the eyes that sought you. You could coorie under a peat bank, in the oxter of a rock, or beneath the grass overhang of a burn. In winter, when the ground was a bog and the mist clung to it like a dripping blanket, men on horses could not follow you among the black pools and moss hags. You could be yards away and they’d never ken you were there. You’d be invisible. The only one you could never hide from, even out here in the worst of weather, was God.
But this was September. The ground was as dry as it would ever be. The boy, hunkered in the sun on a grassy hummock pockmarked with burrows, picked up yellow-brown pellets from the dirt and cut open a couple with his thumbnail. ‘Tabacca’s low,’ his uncle had said. ‘Awa up on the hill, James, and fetch us mair rabbit purls. Mind that they’re no full dried oot, but crotlie – like this, see.’ He handed him a twist of brown leaf, breaking it up with his fingers. ‘On yer wey then. Whit the sodgers dinna ken’ll no hurt them.’
The boy fished the sample out of his pouch and compared it with the compacted shite in his palm. Slivers of grass, like colourless veins, were pressed into the tiny balls. He tore off some tobacco and stuck it in his
