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I can design you a structure to withstand hundred-foot waves for thirty years
or more and make it as sturdy and safe as any other designer could for the
weight and the budget, but I can't see my hand in front of my face when it
comes to doing sensible things with my own life. If there is a design to my
own existence it escapes me. What was that old Family song?
The Weaver's Answer
. Yeah, well; where's mine, Jimmy?
He bought a Toyota MR2 as well as the latest model Quattro, he started flying
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lessons, he built up a sound system based on Scottish-made components, he
bought the Minolta 7000 camera as soon as it came out, added a CD player to
the hi-fi and thought about buying a power boat. He went sailing with some of
Andrea's old pals, from the marina at Port Edgar, on the south bank of the
Forth, upstream from the two great bridges.
He grew restless with the Quattro and the MR2. There was always some better
car; a Ferrari or an Aston or a Lambo or some limited edition Porsche or
whatever ... he decided to stop competing and go for timeless elegance
instead. He found a well-looked-after MK II Jaguar 3.8 through a local dealer;
he sold the Audi and the Toyota.
He had the Jag re-upholstered in red Connelly leather. A specialist tuner
dismantled the engine, blueprinted it, changed the cams, pistons, valves and
carbs and fitted electronic ignition; they completely revised the suspension,
fitted beefier brakes, new wheels and asymmetric tyres, plus a new gearbox to
handle all the extra torque. He had it fitted with four new seat belts, a
laminated windscreen, more powerful lights, electric windows, tinted glass, a
sunroof, and anti-theft devices he'd have trusted a
Chieftain tank to (but which he kept forgetting about). The car spent three
days at another specialist firm having a new sound system installed, complete
with CD player. It can make your ears bleed, he told people; I haven't even
found all the speakers yet. Half the boot seems to be amplifier; I don't know
which is going to give way under the vibration first; my ear drums or the
outside paint job (he'd had it rustproofed and repainted; twelve coats,
hand-painted). 'Good heavens,' Stewart said when he told him
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ICE equipment had cost to install, 'You can buy a new car for that.' 'I know,'
he agreed.
'You could buy a new car for the cost of a year's insurance and a new set of
tyres for the thing as well.
More money than sense.'
Nothing seemed to work quite perfectly. The car had annoying rattles, the
house CD player had an intermittent fault, the camera had to be replaced and
almost all of the records he bought seemed to have scratches on them; his
dishwasher kept flooding the kitchen. He found himself becoming short tempered
with people, and traffic jams infuriated him; a sort of pervasive impatience
seemed to fill him, and a callousness he could not evade. He gave money to
Live Aid all right, but his first thought when he heard of the Band Aid record
had been about the revolutionary adage which compared giving to charity under
capitalism to putting a Band-aid on a cancer.
The 1985 Festival couldn't even revive his spirits. Andrea was there for part
of it, but even when she was with him, in the next seat at a hall or cinema,
or in the passenger's seat in the car, or beside him in bed, she wasn't really
with him, not all of her. Part of the woman's thoughts were not free, not for
him. She still didn't want to talk about it. He heard circuitously that there
were complications to Gustave's MS; he tried to bring the subject up but she
would not co-operate. It dismayed him there were things they could not talk
about. It was his own fault; he never had wanted to talk about Gustave. You
couldn't change the rules now.
He had dreams about the dying man in the other city, and sometimes thought he
could see him, lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by machines.
Andrea went back to Paris half-way through the Festival. He couldn't face the
cultural equivalent of a thousand-bomber raid alone, so he borrowed a friend's
Bonneville and took off for Skye.
It rained.
The company went from strength to strength, but he was starting to lose
interest. What, in the end, am I
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really doing? he asked himself. Just another fucking brick in the wall, just
another cog in the machine, if a little better oiled than most. I make money
for oil companies and their shareholders and for governments that spend it on
weapons that can kill us all a thousand times over instead of just five
hundred; I don't even operate at the level of an ordinary decent worker, like
my dad did; I'm a fucking boss
, I
employ
, I
have real drive and initiative (or I used to); I actually make it all run just
that little bit better than it might if I wasn't here.
He cut the whisky out again, spent some time drinking only mineral water. He
gave up dope almost completely once he realised he wasn't enjoying it any
more. The only time he did smoke was when he went over to see Stewart. Then it
was like old times.
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He started to take coke regularly; it got to be a Monday morning ritual and
the natural start to an evening out until one night he was watching the
television news and cutting up a couple of generous lines before he went out
drinking. There was a follow-up report on the African famine being shown. He
looked away from a child with dead eyes and skin like a bat's wing; he looked
down to the mirror on the table he was hunkered over and saw his own face
looking back at him through the shining granules of white powder.
He'd stuffed three hundred pounds' worth of this stuff up his nose the
previous week. He threw the razor down. Shit, he said to himself.
A bad year, he told himself. Just another bad year. He started smoking
cigarettes. He finally accepted he needed glasses. The bald patch on his head
was the size of a bath plug-hole. He seemed to feel the restlessness of youth
and the last-chance urgency of age at the same time. He was thirty-six years
old, but he felt like eighteen going on seventy-two.
In November Andrea told him she was thinking of going to stay in Paris, to
look after Gustave. They might have to get married, if his family insisted.
She hoped he understood. 'I'm sorry kid,' she said, dull voiced.
'Yeah,' he said. 'Me too.'
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