Time of Lies Read online

  Kathy is the anchor of my life, but the Royal Navy hoists anchors. The top brass have decided to ‘discover’ her so we’re not sure where we might be for the next couple of years – possibly Washington DC. In the meantime I try to pull my weight when she visits Cairstine. Helensburgh can be a tough gig for her to do alone. Often enough we’ll walk down to the promenade where the bust of John Logie Baird, Helensburgh’s celebrity, fixes the loch with a proprietorial gaze; if we feel like it we might stroll along to Rhu to see whether any submarines pass by.

  Right now I’m staring as hard as I can at the crocuses, because Cairstine is about to make me explode into giggles. Kathy and I went to see Jimmy Keohane at the AlbaR last night, the club on North Frederick Street. After all, Glaswegian comedy is famous. The club was Kathy’s pick, up-and-coming, so we overlooked its heart-on-its-sleeve Nationalist sympathies. Besides, Brexit and the collapse of English politics into a kindergarten had turned every comedian north of the border into a Nationalist. In London we missed the fuss about Jimmy’s new material on dementia.

  ***

  Setting off a hydrogen bomb is like telling a joke with a triple punch line – one which leaves hundreds of thousands of people irradiated, incinerated or turned into burning postage stamps by the blast wave.

  Someone pulls a trigger – the first punch line. Inside a metal coffin two bits of stuff are hurled together by a conventional explosion. Harmless on their own, together they create the second punch line – an atomic explosion. That explosion hurls yet more stuff together to make a third kind of explosion, the kind you get inside a star: your own private star, coming now to where you now live. So Kathy pulled the trigger which sent us, harmless on our own, smashing into Jimmy Keohane; Jimmy sent us smashing into Cairstine; and then off we all go, twinkle, twinkle.

  The AlbaR was like an upside-down gym. Benches, weight stacks and rowing machines hung at odd angles from bare ceilings and ventilating shafts. The place was heaving. Kathy had booked us into the eating area but the rest was standing-room only.

  Until Jimmy came on, what we got was intravenous politics. True, we’re in a General Election. Even in Scotland it’s still a General Election. For the comedians, the politicians were like fish in a barrel.

  Fair play, the governing parties – the two Tory parties and the Scot Nats – were getting crucified for the 2018 bank bail-outs. You have to hand it to the bankers, and by God as taxpayers have we done that with feeling. The Treasury had never really recovered from 2008, so when our banks fell over again we had to crawl to the IMF. This time the eighteen-year-olds have woken up to who’s going to pay off the new debt (them), and how (unemployment). So even in a Nat club the Nat leader was getting a hosing, while the Frumpy Tories and the Future Tories were getting water-boarded. (‘I see a few faces from last week. Now me nan brung me up to say sorry when I overstep the mark, and last week I did. I told a few jokes about the Tories and paedophilia. Well, I’m sorry. Tonight I’ll stick with paedophilia.’)

  Then Jimmy Keohane came on. He was my height, five foot nine with a buzz cut. His humour was based on physical repetition. When he repeated a line, every hair in his eyebrows and every crease in his belly repeated what they had done four or five seconds before, exactly. His flesh moved like a freaky, computer-generated image. He kicked off with some gentle parody of marital arguments.

  ‘You moved the spoon.’ (He re-plays moving the spoon.)

  ‘No way I moved the spoon.’ (He re-plays not moving the spoon.)

  ‘Are you fucking blind? Of course you moved the spoon. I blame your mother.’

  We had no idea why we were corpsing, but we were. Then, before we knew it, Jimmy flipped subjects: he started dancing with dementia.

  According to the biggest rumour ever, dementia is why the Queen withdrew to Balmoral in 2019, installing Charles as Prince Regent. Funny that, Jimmy said; we put the Queen away because she’s started talking to plants when Charles has been at it for years. No, he argued, the Queen was just pretending to have dementia; the greed and idiocy of British politics had simply got too much for her. Who could blame her when Cameron had twice tossed the fate of the kingdom – her kingdom – to a referendum, like a coin?

  And then Jimmy threw out the idea that is making me squirm in Cairstine’s. What if the Queen was not the only senior citizen to have had a light-bulb moment? What if older people aren’t half as stupid as we think? Maybe they’ve cottoned on that pretending to have dementia is a way to snatch back power and make everyone else’s life utterly miserable. Besides, Jimmy claimed, how hard can dementia be to fake? What’s more like dementia than forgetting the story you’re making up?

  With that, Jimmy brought us Roger and Johann, a gay couple, having tea with Roger’s ma. Pretending to have dementia lets ma stick her beak ruthlessly into Roger and Johann’s relationship, breaking it like a beady-eyed bird smashing an oyster against rocks. Just like what Cairstine was doing to Kathy right now.

  4

  Helensburgh, Sunday 19 April 2020 (2)

  ‘Both of my girls were angels,’ explains Cairstine, ‘in their own way. But Kathy was very focussed on her career. I had to find my place in her order of things.’ She beams a smile like a cracked dinner plate. ‘She left me.’

  ‘Ma, I’m here.’

  ‘And where else would you be? It comes down to that man. I blame him.’

  I assume she means me. The giggles will be unstoppable if I don’t say something. Besides, I’ve flown four hundred miles to help Kathy play verbal tennis against a wonky ball-throwing machine: it’s time to join my partner at the net. ‘Usually it depends on the woman too,’ I offer.

  Cairstine turns to me. ‘Oh, look at yourself giggling away, and thinking I don’t know. No, you’re not the man,’ she explains dismissively. ‘You’re not Kathy’s boss. He had designs on her. Trust a mother’s instinct.’ She looks back at Kathy, tilting her head to one side. ‘Now Meghan was different. She was absolutely devoted to her ma. And she had a career as well. Of course she did.’

  Is Kathy tired, or tired of being put down? Is she following dementia care advice? Whatever the reason, she puts a foot into the fantasy world of ‘Meghan’. ‘What career was that, ma?’ she asks. ‘Meghan’s, I mean.’

  Punishment is guaranteed, and it comes. ‘Oh you’re heartless! She had that terrible accident, didn’t she? So she couldn’t have a career.’

  I laugh out loud – I can’t help it.

  Kathy throws me a look like a grenade. ‘How could I know, Ma? There never was any Meghan.’

  ‘That’s wicked! Because Meghan would have –’

  Cairstine’s voice tails off. That’s rare in this habitat.

  ‘Because Meghan would have – ?’ Kathy persists.

  ‘Oh, she would have outshone Kathy,’ Cairstine replied. ‘I never said a word to Kathy, of course, but I knew. The way a mother does. Outshone her into a cinder.’

  Hydrogen bomb test subjects standing miles away, with gloved hands clamped over their goggles and facing away from ground zero, have reported seeing everything turn blinding white. Kathy and I can confirm the accuracy of these reports. We finish our visit early, badly needing some recovery time.

  ***

  Every year the local council slaps a fresh coat of dereliction on Helensburgh’s swimming pool and fairground. We park alongside and walk along the seafront. By the time we pass the Ardencaple Hotel and Rhu Marina, Kathy has calmed down. She had drinking lessons (tequila slammers) in one and sailing lessons in the other. Both involved salt and experienced instructors. The Royal Navy was the obvious next step.

  We walk tall out onto the spit, in Kathy’s case from her service training, in my case from Pilates. Kathy’s shorter but there’s barely an inch in it. She walks purposefully, I’m closer to ambling. Let’s say she got the runner’s body and I got the forgetful jogger’s.

  Curly black hair tumbles d
own below my collar. I touch my crown. My locks are as come-hither as they were twenty years ago, maybe more so. Epidermal growth factor shampoo from Iceland is brilliant.

  Kathy is in black stockings, a dark skirt and pastel blouse (that’s the grown-up in-the-office side of Kathy), wrapped in a shawl. The shawl might as well have been designed by Tracey Emin; that’s the Kathy who drank tequila slammers. Her chestnut hair is pinned in an office-friendly bun. Helensburgh trips have become work.

  ‘Did she seem the same to you?’ Kathy asks.

  ‘The same old, I thought.’

  ‘One day…’ Kathy’s eyes flick to mine. She was eighteen when I first saw the spark in her eyes. I still see it now.

  ‘A care home won’t be the end of the world,’ I venture. ‘Much as she’d like you to think it is. She might even enjoy it – discover some more long-lost siblings for you.’

  ‘If you’re not going to say anything more intelligent than that, don’t bother saying anything at all.’

  The loch itself is flat with a light grey counterpane of high cloud. Springtime is my favourite time of year to come. For instance, now it’s gone tea-time and we’ve still three hours of daylight left, and no midges.

  We walk out to the Rhu Narrows light, two hundred yards into Gare Loch on the end of a shingle spit. It’s like standing beside a Belisha beacon on a traffic island, one-third of the way across one of London’s clogged arterial roads – maybe the Cromwell Road near Earl’s Court – but the Narrows is narrower. Three miles to the north, guarded by a stationary police boat and some undercover seagulls, is Faslane. In the event of a nuclear bust-up, this will be the first place in the British Isles to be vaporised, taking with it Glasgow and over a million people. The forests and heather of Loch Long and Loch Lomond would be ablaze.

  Some of the seagulls eye us quizzically and call up reinforcements. A black police inflatable comes round Rosneath Point, darting about like a fly.

  ‘Barry and Joan do a great job looking in on her,’ I point out.

  Kathy’s worry lines report for duty. ‘But their son has just bought that place near Granada. They’ll be around less in the winters.’

  I can tell she’s thinking about the possible move to Washington. Kathy’s boss is Patrick Smath. He pronounces it ‘Smayth’. From what Kathy says, he’s nice enough in a sorry-you-weren’t-as-well-educated-as-I-was way. He’s no Navy man but right up there, the most senior civil servant in the Ministry of Defence. For the last year Kathy has been working for him. If there is anything to Cairstine’s mutterings about a man with designs on Kathy’s career, that man is Patrick.

  ‘He wants me to go to Washington, but spend some time with the war-gamers at Rhode Island first.’

  ‘Don’t you think war games says it all?’

  ‘Zack, sometimes! I’ve told you … they’re not games. They’re about getting ready for the future. For goodness sake, think about the Russians, the terrorists, the hackers. No-one’s playing by the old rules. If we don’t practise, we lose. All our best people do this kind of stuff. Why Patrick thinks I’m one of them I don’t get, but don’t wind me up.’

  I hold her close and bury my face in her shawl, in the smoothness of alpaca and bamboo. When my eyes open I’m facing Rosneath Point. Beyond the Firth of Clyde lies the Atlantic.

  I catch my breath at a sight I’ve never seen before. A dark sword is being unsheathed at the water’s edge. The sword slides into view between low, grey-green hills, yachts at play and a ferry boat. Its front is rounded but as alien and black as Kubrick’s monoliths in 2001. While the submarine turns towards us its length vanishes, but not for long: the god of destruction accompanied by eight armed boats and tugs heads our way. This is Shiva, with two periscopes and a sonar third eye. His trident can spit dozens of nuclear warheads more than 7,000 miles. He is coming in procession before us.

  He passes us almost within arm’s reach. The submarine is one-third again as wide as an athletics track, as long as an athletics oval. Fifteen-thousand tonnes drive through the water in silence. Wavelets touch Darth Vader’s cloak before streaming in lines to lap obediently at our feet. The dorsal fin, the conning tower, rises five storeys above us. Diving planes protrude to port and starboard. The tail fin makes a defiant finger gesture out of the wake. We don’t care to find out whether Shiva’s bridesmaids will fire their heavy calibre machine-guns, so we don’t wave.

  And then he is past, handing back to us permission to speak while he punts his way up Gare Loch. Yes, one of the biggest insanities in human history has just passed close enough to touch. But see the other side of me, he now says. Watch me transporting underwater what you do not care to think about. I’ve been taking your fears to a safe place for decades. Thousands of sailors and engineers and physicists have worked hard at it. The least you might do is say thanks?

  My mind takes flight in every direction. I seek refuge from large horrors in smaller ones, like Cairstine’s invention of Meghan. What might any of us do to nourish survival, to exist, still to be noticed and talked about, as remembered grandeur fades? Is that how Cairstine thinks?

  My questions about Cairstine could have been questions about Britain. Is Trident part of what we do to nourish survival, to exist, still to be noticed and (so we imagine) talked about in the world, as remembered grandeur fades?

  Kathy is deflected neither by national dementia nor by nuclear annihilation. ‘We need to turn back or we’ll miss our flight.’

  Two black guillemots descend to inspect a washed-up Morrisons supermarket bag. I take out my six-week-old vape pen. I used to smoke roll-ups but finding a tobacco-flavoured American juice has done the trick. I exhale a cloud.

  ‘That was Vanguard,’ says Kathy. ‘She was the first Trident submarine – the first British one, I mean. Her first patrol was in 1994. From the garden I watched her put to sea.’

  ‘So you were twelve and I was sixteen. Christmas number one?’

  ‘East 17, you silly idiot – “Stay Another Day”.’

  My phone fetches the video. ‘White parkas and Santa’s dandruff!’

  Kathy peers as we walk. ‘Yeah. And we-can’t-dance-so-we’ll-sign-for-the-deaf-instead. Mind you, I was in love with Tony Mortimer.’

  ‘Which was Tony?’ I tease.

  ‘Which one! Look at those eyebrows. The other guys were a bit scary for a twelve-year-old. Did I ever tell you your eyebrows look like his?’

  ‘Only a million times – which doesn’t make it true.’

  ***

  At Glasgow airport there isn’t anything better to do than get another reality dose from the national news.

  It’s been forever since the media went into full-on election mode. All the parties bar one are fucked. The Liberals haven’t yet followed Lazarus out of their grave. Neither of the Labour parties are doing anything in Scotland; in England a lot of their supporters have gone Green. UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party, flaky at the best of times, turned out to have stronger competition – BG. More than one poll now has BG ahead of the whole pack, which makes me ill.

  Television news has become living torture. Eight national ‘parties’ try to occupy the space previously squatted on incompetently by two or three, tying the broadcasters in knots with lawsuits. So the early evening news now occupies an hour, and the main nightly bulletin two. Change.org has a petition begging for the news to be replaced by the compulsory eating of toads.

  The departure lounge has more than its share of election toads, in suits, on a Sunday evening. Tonight all of them are staring at their smartphones in a blissful daze. Apparently BG have fucked up.

  The leader of the Britain’s Great party is beaming at me from the screen across the lounge. Some people call it the Bob Grant party, or the Bermondsey Geezer party. Wearing black designer trackies with a red-and-white lion (standard BG campaign gear), Bob’s thighs have squashed the turquoise telly sofa into submi
ssion. He’s an inch taller than me and a stone and a half heavier. He’s shaved his head since he was twelve. He claims the weight is all muscle, but I say it’s congealed sweat off other people’s backs. The screen has been muted but everyone in Britain knows his standard riff off by heart:

  Britain’s Great! ’Course we are. You want to know why? You need to be told? Then fuck off mate. Get out of my country. We don’t want you.

  I don’t give a fuck if you were born here. Maybe you were born in the business class lounge at Heathrow. Maybe you’re white as it goes, maybe latte or flippin’ espresso – do I give a fuck? I’ve seen too many white arseholes born here, went to posh schools here, went to university here – you and I paid for them by the way – and they wouldn’t know why Britain’s great if you cut off their bollocks and shoved them where the sun don’t shine. I say fuck off to the lot of them. This country’s for people who know it’s great.

  You know the shit-bags I’m on about. You’ve seen them on the telly, they’ve been running our governments – this government, the one before that, and the one before that. Forget what the parties were called, it was always them with their cuff-links and suits-me-nicely pensions killing themselves laughing over the Third Way, the Big Society, climate change, the Northern Powerhouse and building grammar schools.

  Because the words were just there to baffle us. They thought we were stupid enough to think the game was Scrabble. What the game really was, it was help yourself, mate, to my job, my home, my bank account, my country, just talk long words at me while you’re doing it.

  Call us stupid to fall for it so many times. But Britain’s Great is doing the calling now and we’re calling time. We reckon the mugs who pay the taxes are smart enough to decide the taxes. Cop this: since we’re the only ones who do pay the taxes, that’s just what we’re going to do.