It had all the extortionate high prices of a boom town but none of the compensating vulgarity. It was a cold, stony-faced city. It did not even look prosperous. That was some measure of the city's mean spirit—its wealth remained hidden. It looked overcautious, unwelcoming and smug, and a bit overweight, like a rich uncle in dull sensible clothes, smelling of mildew and ledgers, who keeps his wealth in an iron chest in the basement. The windows and doors of Aberdeen were especially solid and unyielding; it was a city of barred windows and burglar alarms, of hasps and padlocks and Scottish nightmares.
The boom town soon discovers that it is possible to make money out of nothing. It was true of the Klondike, where, because women were scarce, hags came to regard themselves as great beauties and demanded gold dust for their grunting favors; in Saudi Arabia today a gallon of water costs more than a gallon of motor oil. In Aberdeen it was hotel rooms. The Station Hotel, a dreary place on the dockside road across from the railway station, charged £48 a night for a single room, which was more than its equivalent would have cost at the Plaza in New York City. Most of the other hotels charged between £25 and £35 a night—fifty bucks on average—and the rooms did not have toilets. I went from place to place with a sense of mounting incredulity, for the amazing thing was not the high prices or the sleazy conditions but rather the fact that there were no spare rooms.
For what I calculated to be $40 I found a hotel room that was like a jail cell—narrow and dark, with a dim light fifteen feet high on the ceiling. There was no bathroom. The bed was the size of a camp cot. Perhaps if I had just spent three months on an oil rig I would not have noticed how dismal it was. But I had been in other parts of Scotland, where they did things differently, and I knew I was being fleeced.
To cheer myself up I decided to go out on the town. I found a joint called Happy Valley—loud music and screams. I thought: Just the ticket.
But the doorman blocked my path and said, "Sorry, you can't go in."
Behind him were jumping, sweating people and the occasional splash of breaking glass.
"You've not got a jacket and tie," he said.
I could not believe this. I looked past him, into the pandemonium.
"There's a man in there with no shirt," I said.
"You'll have to go, mate."
I suspected that it was my oily hiker's shoes that he really objected to, and I hated him for it.
I said, "At least I'm wearing a shirt."
He made a monkey noise and shortened his neck. "I'm telling you for the last time."
"Okay, I'm going. I just want to say one thing," I said. "You're wearing one of the ugliest neckties I've ever seen in my life."
Up the street another joint was advertising "Country and Western Night." I hurried up the stairs, toward the fiddling.
"Ye canna go in," the doorman said. "It's too full."
"I see people going in," I said. They were drifting past me.
"And we're closing in a wee munnit."
I said, "I don't mind."
"And you're wearing blue jeans," he said.
"And you're wearing a wrinkled jacket," I said. "And what's that, a gravy stain?"
"Ye canna wear blue jeans here. Regulations."
"Are you serious? I can't wear blue jeans to an evening of country and western music?"
"Ye canna."
I said, "How do you know I'm not Willie Nelson?"
He jabbed me hard with his stubby finger and said, "You're nae Wullie Nullson, now piss off!"
And so I began to think that Aberdeen was not my kind of place. But was it anyone's kind of place? It was fully employed and tidy and virtuous, but it was just as bad as any of the poverty-stricken places I had seen—worse, really, because it had no excuses. The food was disgusting, the hotels overpriced and indifferent, the spit-and-sawdust pubs were full of drunken and bad-tempered men—well, who wouldn't be? And it was not merely that it was expensive and dull; much worse was its selfishness. Again, it was the boom town ego. Nothing else mattered but its municipal affairs. The newspapers ignored the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the United Nations initiative on the Falklands and the new space shuttle. Instead, their headlines concentrated on the local moneymaking stuff—the new industries, the North Sea pipeline about to be laid, the latest oil rigs. The world hardly existed, but financial news, used cars, and real estate took up seven pages of the daily paper.
The Aberdeen American, a fortnightly paper, had the self-conscious gusto of a church newsletter. It was a hotchpotch of news about barbecues, schools, American primary elections, and features with an Anglo-American connection. It was a reminder that the American community in Aberdeen was large. The American School had three premises. I heard American voices on the buses. And I was certain that it was the Americans who patronized the new health clubs—weight-loss emporiums and gymnasiums with wall-to-wall carpets. A lovely granite church had been gutted and turned into the Nautilus Total Fitness Centre.
On a quiet street in the western part of the city was the American Foodstore. I went there out of curiosity, wondering what sort of food Americans viewed as essential to their well-being on this savage shore. My findings were: Crisco, Thousand Island Dressing, Skippy Peanut Butter, Cheerios, Pepperidge Farm Frozen Blueberry Muffins, Bama Brand Grape Jelly, Mama's Frozen Pizza, Swanson's Frozen Turkey TV Dinner, Chef Boyardee Spaghetti Sauce, El Paso Taco Sauce, and Vermont Pancake Syrup. I also noted stacks of Charmin Toilet Paper, Budweiser Beer, and twenty-five-pound bags of Purina Dog Chow.
None of it was good food, and it was all vastly inferior to the food obtainable locally, which cost less than half as much. But my experience of Aberdeen had shown me that foreigners were treated with suspicion, and it was quite understandable that there was a sense of solidarity to be had from being brand-loyal. Crisco and Skippy were part of being an American—and, in the end, so was Charmin Toilet Paper. I imagined that to an American in Aberdeen imported frozen pizza was more than a cultural necessity—it was also a form of revenge.
"Isn't there anything you like about Aberdeen?" Mr. Muir asked imploringly, as we waited on the platform at Guild Street Station for the train to Dundee. I had spent ten minutes enumerating my objections, and I had finished by saying that I never wanted to see another boom town again. What about the cathedral, the university, the museum—hadn't I thought the world of them?
"No," I said.
He looked appalled.
I said, "But I liked the bakeries. The fresh fish. The cheese."
"The bakeries," Mr. Muir said sadly.
I did not go on. He thought there was something wrong with me. But what I liked in Aberdeen was what I liked generally in Britain: the bread, the fish, the cheese, the flower gardens, the apples, the clouds, the newspapers, the beer, the woolen cloth, the radio programs, the parks, the Indian restaurants and amateur dramatics, the postal service, the fresh vegetables, the trains, and the modesty and truthfulness of people. And I liked the way Aberdeen's streets were frequently full of seagulls.
21. The 9:51 to Leuchars Junction
IT WAS a mild meadowy coast for seventy miles, from the mouth of the Dee to the mouth of the Tay—Aberdeen to Dundee. I had hoped to walk part of it, keeping to the clifftops and avoiding the deep cuts and gullies and the dark promontories. I liked the way the shaggy grass hung into the coves from the cliff edge. Today that grass was streaming and even the sea was flattened by the falling rain. The storm brightened the stone on the snug coastal cottages and gave it the color of snail shells.