A Year in Fife Park (3 page)

I also know how I felt that day. Not just because I remember the feeling, which could have been misinterpreted or glossed over with time. I know how I felt because I remember the process of remembering. I remember what I was trying to say, the message in the memory. I remember what I told myself I would.

So there is the answer, in a roundabout way. I know that I was so perfectly content in St. Andrews, because I told myself so at the time, and I’m almost certain that I wouldn’t have lied.

Surf and Turfed Out

Freshers Week in the Second Year came and went almost without incident which, given the flatulent events line-up, you could have been forgiven for thinking was the plan. There was one oddly shining star in the week – an unofficial black-tie ball called the Surf and Turf, which was being openly condemned by the Student’s Association. That was the first point in its favour. The second was the venue: in amongst the fronds and fishes at the Sea Life Centre.

The price for admission was pretty steep, but included unlimited cocktails. Craig was up for it, but I couldn’t persuade anyone else. I spent all day looking for a pair of formal shoes that would fit my monstrously large feet, and I came up with squat.

‘What the hell are you wearing?’ Craig asked, when we went to get our taxi.

‘Golf shoes,’ I said.

‘Oh, great. Fucking great. Maybe we’ll get a game in on the way home. Way to go, asshole.’

The atmosphere in the Sea Life Centre was perfect. We had pretty much the full run of the place, wandering down dark corridors windowed with fish tanks full of tropical (and sometimes utterly hideous) fish. There were a few rooms large enough for people to mix in, and they had been converted into cramped dance floors. The drinks were free as promised and as freely flowing, at first. The place was on three levels, indoors and outdoors, and was, to put it mildly, sexy as hell. Everybody there was loaded.

There was music pumping throughout, and a live band in one of the bigger areas. We bumped into a couple of the Randoms there and exchanged drunken greetings, even though we couldn’t remember each other’s names, or hear anything we said over the sound of the music. One of the guitarists broke a string, and carried on playing the song. Occasionally it would get in the way, making a scratchy, amplified rasping sound. It was exactly that sort of an off-the-cuff night.

‘This place is alright,’ Craig said. This was more praise than I had ever heard Craig use in a single sentence before.

‘It really is. The other half are in tonight, eh? I hardly recognise anyone.’

[In St. Andrews there are only two explanations for not immediately recognising everyone within a hundred yards, and one of them is amnesia. The other is that you’ve stumbled head first into the old boy’s network.]

‘They don’t stay at the Park, Quinn, that’s for sure.’

‘Where do the fuck
do
they stay?’

‘Sallies. And big fuck-off penthouse flats hidden in the middle of town.’

‘No regrets on that front?’ It seemed like the right time to ask.

‘I spent a lot of time in Fife Park last year, too,’ he said.

‘Yeah, but mostly, she came out to yours at night.’

‘Mostly,’ he said.

‘Cause Fife Park is shite.’

‘Yeah. God, it’s fucking awful.’

‘You think all this music is bad for the fish?’

A bright yellow and blue fish in a nearby tank seemed to be swimming in time with the band. It was upside down.

‘Doubt it. They’d never have hired the place out, if it was.’

[Later we found out that what was really bad for the fish was the sheer number of assholes emptying their cocktail glasses into the tanks.]

‘I’m amazed they did. This place is unreal.’

‘Cocktails are pretty low rent, though,’ Craig said, swirling his plastic beaker.

[Colour by Dettol, flavour by blue Ice Pop. Or possibly the other way around.]

‘Listen, Craig,’ I said. ‘This year’s going to be different.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Potentially.’

‘We’re off to a good start,’ I said.

‘Best start ever.’

‘But I meant me,’ I said. ‘It’s going to be different this year.’

‘Okay.’

‘I’m going to sort it all out, mate,’ I said.  ‘All of it.’

He shrugged, honestly.

‘Quinn, you think some things are important that aren’t. You don’t get what’s important to everyone else. You’re a total fuckup.’

‘I’ve got my issues,’ I relented, cheerfully.

‘Mate, everyone has issues, but yours don’t make any
sense
.’

‘Look, I’ve got a plan,’ I told him. ‘I know what I need to do.’

I expected him to be interested. He wasn’t.

‘You know, you’re a lot more fun when you’re not getting obsessed over some shit that doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ I said.

There was a wooden veranda outside which looked out over the half lit bay, and a barbecue setup with hotdogs and snacks. Craig disappeared at some point, and I was left standing alone with a hotdog in my hand. I stared out over the bay, taking it all in. The sights, the sounds, the dirty smell of the sea and the smoky taste of my junk food.

It was a good night, but it came in on a good tide. The sweet mood was merely an extension, an expression, of what was already true to me; that I was in the right place, that things were going to be fine.

Warm and homely, it also carried an electric note of excitement. It was anticipation, and joy. It washed over me like the lapping sea; it kept on lapping, kept on giving, in waves. It seemed to be almost never ending. I put the whole night on pause, as if to remind myself for a lifetime that such a thing could be true.

I don’t know if you’ve ever felt completely at one with a time and a place, as if you could roll with anything it threw, and be prepared to throw yourself back knowing that nothing would hurt you harder than you could stand? I think it is a better feeling than even believing you will never be hurt at all. It would make such a state seem like sleep.

I concentrated on the feeling, on the horizon, on the glow of the lamps, gold and black, shimmering and distorted in the crests of countless gentle breakers; a satin blanket of a night; warm and glossy, charged and potent.

I don’t know how long I stood there. I remember it now as a single experience, suspended like a jewel in the evening, set apart from the minor events, the conversations, the passing of time.

And it occurred to me that I never once felt out of place in St. Andrews. I felt like an idiot plenty of times, like I didn’t know what was going on all of the time, and like I was missing out on
something
most of the time. But, if anything, that only made me hungry to see, do, and live a little more. I never felt like I should be anywhere else, not for a moment, not even when I wanted the earth to swallow me.

There were tough times, and melodrama, and I was stupid with my time and with love, and wrong about it, too. But that sponge-like faith in the rightness of it all cushioned every blow. I could shrug off the worst of it, and still feel nothing but harmony and that strange, hopeful, coy expectation.

It was a slight pressure on my shoulder that finally brought me back to the night.

‘Are you wearing
trainers
?’ a girl in a long green evening dress was asking, with the peculiar nasal shock of the gaspingly rich. She put her hand to her chest, as if to calm herself after a nasty experience.

‘Not exactly,’ I sighed, wishing the earth would swallow me.

When I found Craig he was chatting to a tall, blonde first-year. I left him to it.

I went to the bar again, where they were now only serving one drink per person. Sandy Bertrando was there, getting outrageously drunk, and pulling out all the stops on his way to oblivion.

‘What do you want to drink?’ Sandy asked me,  a little too showily for a place with a free bar.

‘Gin and Tonic,’ I said. Sandy frowned, and ordered something else. Something pink.

‘Thanks,’ I said, as we left the bar.

‘Aha! They’re both for me,’ he said in his typical, mocking whine.

‘Of course they are,’ I said, with a sigh. I had forgotten what a prick Sandy could be when he was... well. All of the time.

‘Yaah! Fuck your system!’ Sandy shouted at the barman, downing one drink and running off with the second. His triumphant laughter echoed down the corridor.

[Bertrando should be hermetically sealed in a vault somewhere in Paris, just to give the world a standard definition for the word ‘cackle’.]

I couldn’t be bothered to join the queue again, so I went off to get another hotdog. I met Craig outside, and we went in together for a last look at things.

‘How’s your blonde?’ I asked.

‘She’s stuffy and rich,’ he said. ‘Even her name. Elizabethe. Elizabethe with an extra ‘E’. You know why? Because her parents can afford one.’

‘You talked for a long time,’ I said, reproachfully.

‘She’s getting a fucking pilot’s license. Jesus.’

‘I think it’s time I tried talking to a girl,’ I said, frowning.

‘Yeah,  well I think it’s time to leave,’ Craig replied.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think this could go on all night’.

‘Not really,’ he said, pointing. ‘The police are here.’

They stood in the doorway, tearing the drinks out of people’s hands, and throwing them to the floor. I wondered how I hadn’t noticed them come in.

‘The party is over,’ one of them shouted into the room. ‘Everybody needs to leave, right now.’

We watched them for a couple of minutes, and then snuck out to go home.

Darcy Loch’s Whey Pat Flat

I met Darcy in town the next morning, at around two p.m.

‘Afternoon, Quinn,’ she said.

‘Yeahyeahyeah,’ I whimpered, unconvinced.

I have no idea what I was in town for, but I remember that I was in pain.

‘Fancy a cup of tea?’ she asked.

‘You had me at tea,’ I told her.

‘That was the end of the sentence.’

‘Fuck.’

‘There’s biscuits, maybe.’

‘You had me at tea,’ I said, clutching my head.

Darcy was Craig’s ex. Things had gone South, and they had treated each other pretty fucking badly in the death throes of the relationship. Neither of them had much good to say about the other.

‘How’ve you been?’ I asked.

‘Shitty,’ she said. ‘Just awful.’ She took a deep breath and smiled, with a sharp, bracing exhale.

The previous year had taught me the range of my emotional intelligence, and I knew that I wanted to work up to other people’s break-ups.

‘I don’t know, maybe I should leave you to it?’

‘No,’ she said, reaching out suddenly. ‘Come see my flat.’

She pulled her arm back before it touched mine, but it hovered urgently.

‘Where are you staying this year?’

‘There,’ she pointed.

‘In the Whey Pat?’

‘Above it. Behind, it, sort of, but round a corner. Come on.’

‘Alright,’ I said.

We walked down the side of the Whey Pat, past a cute little garden with hanging baskets, and through a little gate, along a wall, around a corner, and back up some stairs to a main door. There was nobody else home.

‘There’s an old lady in the flat below,’ Darcy said. ‘You better take your shoes off, because she complains when we walk around.’

‘At night?’ I said. One of my socks had a hole in it at the big toe.

‘No, then it’s fine. She sleeps like a log. Just in the day. She’s always banging on the floor.’

It was a dinky looking place from the entry way, but there were stairs going upwards. There were clothes drying all the way up the banister. We went into the kitchen, which was also awash with damp laundry, and the hot sickly smell of a freshly run load.

The kitchen overlooked the cute little garden we had passed on the way in. I looked out of the window, while Darcy pottered at the counter. On the opposite side of the road was an old folk’s home.

‘There’s always someone up at night, sitting in that lounge, no matter what time it is,’ she said. ‘I guess it doesn’t matter what time it is when you’re old.’

‘Old people sleep less,’ I said.

‘Not less than you.’ 

‘Not less than me.’

‘Bourbons okay?’ she asked.

I turned back into the room. She was holding a packet of biscuits. I nodded.

‘I think I would find it comforting to see them there,’ I said, indicating out of the window with my thumb. ‘I sometimes just feel like I need to see other people when I can’t sleep.’

‘You can see me, sometimes,’ Darcy said. ‘I don’t sleep so well, either. Just give me a call.’

‘OK,’ I said. But I didn’t mean it, at least not right then. You can’t call someone at five in the morning on the off chance they’re still awake.

Darcy put the tea down, and brought over a plate with biscuits on. I had forgotten that Darcy knew me well enough. But she’d been with us, ostensibly one of our group, for most of the first year. She had been Craig’s girlfriend, after all. I still felt like she was a stranger.

‘I feel like we’ve hardly talked for ages,’ Darcy said. She settled into a high-backed chair on the opposite side of the kitchen table. She cupped her mug with both hands.

‘Well, there was the summer,’ I said. ‘And all the stuff with Craig.’

‘He’s such a bastard,’ she said.

‘There’s a healthy reflex.’

‘Sorry, I know he’s your friend,’ Darcy said.

‘He can be a jerk.’

She sighed, and shrugged.

Darcy wasn’t beautiful. Her features were just a bit too round and cherub-like to really be striking and a bit too ordinary to be girl-next-door attractive. But she did have a certain appealing way about her, a certain air that sometimes made her seem like she was really something. At any rate, I could certainly imagine fucking her, so I did that for a while.

‘What are you giving me that dopey look for?’ Darcy asked.

‘Just checking out your eyeliner,’ I lied, immediately, while one half of my brain screamed at me that I didn’t know what eyeliner was, or if she was wearing any.

‘Oh, yah,’ she said. ‘It’s a really nice colour, hmm? It’s just from Boots, but I had to go out to Dundee to find one big enough to stock the colours that suit me.’