'No, no,' he said, pushing back his hair and sitting forward in his chair to peer intently at the screen.
I took the last Scotsman fiche off the glass plate and put the first Glasgow Herald fiche on. Topee continued to stare at the screen. 'Is?'
'What?'
'What am I looking for, anyway?'
'Shipwrecks.'
'Shipwrecks.'
'Well, maybe not actual shipwrecks,' I said, recalling that Zhobelia had said there hadn't been any shipwrecks at the time. 'But something like shipwrecks.'
Topee grimaced, looking up at the ceiling. 'Right. Cool. Anything else?'
'Yes. Anything that rings a bell.'
'Eh?'
'Anything that sounds familiar. Anything that sounds like it might be linked to the Order.'
He looked at me. 'You mean you don't know what we're looking for.'
'Not exactly,' I admitted, scanning my half of the display. 'If I knew exactly what it was there wouldn't be any need to look.'
'Right,' he said.'… So I've got to look for something, like, really carefully, but I don't know what it is I'm looking for except it might be something like a shipwreck, that isn't?'
'That's right.'
From the corner of my eye, I could see that Topee continued to study me. I half expected him to rise from his chair and walk out, but instead he just turned back to the screen and pulled his seat closer. 'Wow,' he chuckled. 'Like, Zen!'
An hour went by. Topee swore he was paying attention but he always claimed to be finished at the same time as me, and I know I read very quickly indeed. Still, I had calculated that we would be lucky to finish all the records of all the papers for September 1948 by the time the library closed, so I had no choice for now but to trust his word. After that first hour, Topee started humming and whistling and making little sibilant noises with his tongue, lips and teeth.
I suspected it was jazz.
The next hour grew to middle age.
I tried with all my might to concentrate, but occasionally I would drift away from my task and start reliving the previous night, hearing Zhobelia tell me in her matter-of-fact way that what I had thought a personal miracle - a blessed affliction, one wise wound upon another - was something I shared through time with generations of my female ancestors, including her. Did that make any more sense of what I felt when I envisioned something? I had no idea. It put my visions in a sort of context but it made the experience no less mysterious. Did it mean anything that God chose to order Their miracles in this manner? I could not shake off the feeling that if there was one thing Salvador had got right it was that we are not even capable yet of understanding the purpose God has in mind for us. We can only struggle through, doing the best we can and trying neither to hide behind ignorance nor over-estimate the reach of our knowledge. I kept having to drag myself back to the task in hand, trawling the past for the key to the present.
And found it.
It was in the Glasgow Courier, dated Thursday, 30th September, 1948. It was as well I was sitting down; the experience of dizziness induced by a familial revelation did not seem to be a condition I was becoming inured to, despite the frequency with which it had swept through me in the past few days. My sight seemed to go a bit swimmy for a while, but I just sat and waited for it to clear.
I read on, while Topee read, or pretended to read, beside me.
Civilian and military police are today seeking Private Moray Black (28) a private of the Dumbartonshire Fusiliers, who is wanted for questioning in connection with an incident at Ruchill Barracks, Glasgow, on Monday night when it is understood an attack took place on a junior officer in the Pay Corps and an amount of money was subsequently found to be missing. Private Black, who is described as five feet ten inches in height and weighing eleven stone five pounds with brown hair, is known to have connections in the Govan area…
The words seemed to dance in front of me. I let them settle down
… Mother believed to be an unmarried textile worker in Paisley… brought up by his grandmother, a member of the Grimsby Brethren, a charismatic sect… gang member… alleged racketeer during War… national service…
'Finished!' Topee said.
I turned and smiled, wondering that Topee did not hear my heart thudding in my chest.
'Right,' I said, and put the fiche back in its box. 'Topee, could you ask a librarian whether it is permitted to have a glass of water or a cup of tea here, at the desk? I'm thirsty, but I don't want to leave…'
'Yup!' he said, and bounded out of his seat as though released by a spring.
I put the fiche back in the machine and took a couple of copies of it while he was away. I quickly searched the other papers. They had the same story, though the Courier seemed to have the most detail; their reporter had talked exclusively to Private Black's grandmother. I went to another shelf and selected the box with October's newspapers in it.
On Saturday the 2nd of October there was another report in the Courier to the effect that Black was still being hunted. The junior officer who had been attacked in the incident was recovering in hospital, concussed.
On the same page, a familiar word attracted my eye; it turned out to be the name of a ship. It appeared in a report which stated that the SS Salvador, a general cargo vessel of 11,500 tons registered in Buenos Aires, which had sailed from Govan docks on the morning of the 28th September bound for Quebec, New York, Colon and Guayaquil, had encountered heavy weather off the Outer Hebrides on the night of the 30th, and suffered structural damage. The ship was now limping back to Glasgow. Amongst its cargo had been railway carriages and other rolling stock, bound for South America. Several carriages lashed to its deck had been washed overboard during the storm.
My God.
I read the article about the SS Salvador again, and looked up at the ceiling.
My Grandfather was washed ashore after a train wreck?
We got back to Topee's flat. Stephen reported, drunkenly, that there had been a message from a Mister Wormsludge - har har - asking me to ring his home number.
I rang Mr Womersledge. He said the serial number on the ten-pound note I had shown him was one of a consecutive batch which had been stolen from the Army Pay Corps in September 1948. The note might be more valuable than he'd said originally, and he could now offer me fifty pounds for it. I said, Thank you, I'd think about it, and put down the phone.
As the final teetering keystone of my belief in my Grandfather finally tumbled down about me and the world I had known seemed to fall away like unseasonable sprink before the sudden thaw, Topee asked, Hey, were we, like, ready to go out for a drink, like, yet?
I - of course - said, Yes.
CHAPTER TWENTY - SEVEN
I had thought that I might find release from my tormented thoughts in alcoholic oblivion, but it was not to be.
After making another couple of phone calls, I duly went out that evening with Topee and his pals, but as we sat quickly drinking beer in a bar in Byres Road - apparently the natural and normal preparation before a dance at something called the Queen Margaret Union - I found myself slipping behind in the beer-drinking, unable to stop myself thinking about the revelation of the inherited, bizarrely serial nature of my Gift and the treachery and mendacity of those close to me.
Barely had I started to come to terms with the betrayal of my own brother when I discovered that my Grandfather was a thief and a liar as well as a potential rapist; that particular scrofulously scabrous cat was scarcely out of the bag when it was revealed - in an almost off-hand manner! - that I was just the latest in a long line of visionaries, faith healers and mediums, dating back to who-knew-when!