SOULIS
1
From the window of the plane the first signs of land — the western islands — appeared. Between gaps in the clouds I could see them outlined in snow against the dark ocean. There were even glimpses of isolated villages and tiny houses. That anything as fragile as life, never mind love, could survive down there was hard to believe.
By the time we landed at the airport just south of Glasgow an hour later, it was after four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon and already dusk. Snow was falling here, too.
I hired a car and was very careful at first, for I wasn’t accustomed to driving on the left side of the road. It made me feel rather disoriented, as if some reversal of the natural order had occurred. I eventually got used to the sensation of being in a looking-glass world. But I still had to go slowly, for the snow turned to sleet, then a heavy rain.
BY THE TIME I got to the edges of the city, night had fallen and the street lights were on. I’d taken the long way round so that I could approach from the east side. That way I passed directly through the Tollgate, which I hadn’t seen since the time of the explosion, all those years ago. I’d braced myself to confront bitter memories but instead was stunned at what had taken place in the intervening years. While the contours of the main streets were much the same, the entire area where I’d been brought up was transformed. The tenements had all been demolished, and newish apartment blocks with little rows of well-lit stores and fast-food restaurants had sprung up to replace them. As though no nightmare had ever occurred.
Quite bewildered, I just kept driving towards the city centre, keeping an eye out for a hotel. Soon I found myself near the docks, with the river alongside glinting in its old, menacing way. From what I could see through the lashing rain, the ships tied up at the wharfs looked as rusty as ever. But otherwise, this whole part of the city was also unrecognizable. The dangerous slums that used to crowd both banks had disappeared to make room for clusters of high rises and flashy office blocks. A few of the more historic buildings seemed to have been spared and spruced up — including one with an illuminated sign: The Strath Hotel. It looked inviting, so I parked on the street as near as I could and hurried back to it out of the cold wind and the rain.
Since the lobby was warm and a room was available, I checked in. I was famished, and so after depositing my bag in the room, I made my way down to the hotel’s low-ceilinged pub-cum-restaurant. It was thick with the smells of fried food, beer, and cigarette smoke. A dozen or more customers were sitting at the various booths. Some of the men wore uniforms— perhaps from the ships I’d noticed — and were accompanied by female companions in noticeable makeup.
A small table by a window looking out onto the wet street was vacant, so I sat there and ate a filling meal of fish and chips with a pint of strong dark beer. As I looked out the window, I couldn’t help marvelling at how much the city had changed. Yet the changes saddened me, too, for some reason. In the case of the Tollgate, it was hard to accept the fact that the bombed-out ruins from that far-off day of horror were now gone. Without them as a marker, the very existence of my parents was made to seem doubly transient and forgettable. I had to console myself with the knowledge that they still lived on vividly in my mind— the only memorial they both would have valued.
I then turned my thoughts to my meeting the next morning with the curator, as well as my return journey to Duncairn. The prospect of these things should have been exciting, but I hadn’t slept on the plane and was starting to feel very tired. By the time I’d got halfway through a second glass of that excellent beer, I couldn’t stop yawning. So I paid for my meal, plodded up to my room, and went to bed, even though it wasn’t long after nine o’clock. The rain drumming against the window mixed with faint sounds from the restaurant beneath lulled my senses.
DUPONT SHOWED ME into a cell where the volunteer, a pale man, lay quite still on his cot observed by keepers in labcoats. When this man held a fossil up to his forehead and closed his eyes, he’d be transported back millions of years. One of the keepers gave him an old rock and he began to describe strange plants and trees. Then he became aware of a huge animal approaching and he shrank back in the cot, screaming, the veins in his brow pulsing. The keeper prised the rock out of his sweating hand, for fear he’d die of shock. The man’s eyes suddenly opened and he stared up at me just as the iron door of the cell behind me slammed shut.
THOSE ACCUSING EYES and that slamming door startled me out of my dream. It took me a few moments to remember I was in the Strath Hotel. Perhaps the door next to mine in the corridor had really banged shut. Certainly, through the wall I could hear the laughter of a man and woman. The bedside clock indicated it was three in the morning.
I tried to put the foolish dream out of my mind and concentrated on getting back to sleep, for the day ahead would be a busy one. Sleep, however, refused to oblige. I started thinking about the Tollgate and reliving that other day, so many years ago, when my parents had been blown to pieces.
Only when I began to hear early-morning traffic in the streets outside the hotel did my grief-stricken and exhausted brain at last close down and I slept.
2
The rain had stopped overnight and there were even brief glimpses of a winter sun as I walked to the National Cultural Centre, about a mile from the hotel.
I arrived at the centre five minutes before my eleven o’clock appointment. It was a newish, boxy structure, but for one noteworthy feature: its east wing was actually a round clock tower, the remnant of a much older stone building.
Inside, I asked for the rare books curator and was directed to that old tower. There, I had to climb a flight of stairs that led directly to a large, circular room with walls of smooth stone and a polished wood floor. Several round windows had been cut in the stone, giving the effect of a ship’s portholes. Lamps dangled from the high plank ceiling. Dozens of grey metal filing cabinets fanned out from the middle of the room like an oversized set of dominoes. Beside them was an array of solid-looking tables and wooden chairs. But I couldn’t see any collection of rare books.
A SHORT, BALDING man whom I hadn’t noticed, for he’d been behind one of the rows of filing cabinets, came towards me with hand outstretched.
“Mr. Steen?” He had that familiar loud voice. “A pleasure to meet you. I’m Neale Soulis, the curator. We’ve talked on the phone.”
He wasn’t at all the elegant scholarly type I’d envisaged. He was fiftyish with a bulbous nose and wire-rimmed glasses. His blue suit was wrinkled, the knot of his tie askew: he was clearly a man uninterested in fashion.
We shook hands.
He had just begun to say more when a most alarming thing happened: the solid stone walls and the floor began to tremble so much I was afraid the tower was about to collapse. Then an ear-splitting noise came from above us: the bell of the clock was slowly chiming the hour of eleven. Soulis waited till the chiming ceased before he spoke again. At least, his lips were moving, but I’d such an after-echo in my ears I could barely make out what he was saying. He waited a moment more then spoke again, or shouted: