Archie and the North Wind (21 page)

‘They looked like kidnappers.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, they rushed in with balaclavas and guns and pushed us out.’

‘Did they have beards?’

‘Yes.’

‘Terrorist beards?’

‘No. Just little safe ones. Like grandfather’s.’

‘Did they say anything?’

‘Nothing we could understand.’

‘What did they wear?’

‘Black things?’

‘Did they smell?’

‘Yes,’ said Gobhlachan. ‘They smelt of fire.’ But this was only because all of his taste buds were completely destroyed over those years sitting next to a burning kiln.

‘No,’ said Olga, because they didn’t smell of horses.

‘Don’t know,’ said Yukon Joe, because he couldn’t really decide which was the best answer.

The sunglassed man left none the wiser, but nevertheless content, for he had a full file.

Later on that night, however, Gobhlachan and Olga and Yukon Joe revealed all to Archie.

‘They were fairies,’ said Gobhlachan, ‘who had travelled from the west on wisps of straw. The mistake we all made was to have left that west window open. I should have known better – that’s always where the host comes from. They took us with them on the back of the straw and we travelled forever through the snow, until it turned green. Their balaclavas were made of the feathers of blackbirds and their guns out of the darkened bones of murderers. They were confused by our sacred language, which, as you know, has special words to remove the tar from feathers and the
smior
– the essence – out of the bones. They were like naked men before us…’

‘And not a pretty sight,’ added Olga.

‘…unable to do anything to us, and of course when daylight came they had to release us, for their feathers began to moult and their guns to decay.’

Yukon Joe, with his glass eye and monocle, sagely agreed with Gobhlachan’s version of events, adding only, ‘The real miracle was that they never discovered my watch. You see, I’d hidden it behind my glass eye, and even though it glinted under their stare, I don’t think they ever suspected. They must have thought it was just some kind of spectacular removable eye, valuable only to its owner. For a while I thought they were going to remove my eye to find the treasure that was behind it, but they didn’t. On the other hand,’ he added, buffing up the gold with a spit and his sleeve, ‘they may already have had enough gold in that dark lair of theirs.’

From then on, it seemed like the beginning of the end of the story. Gobhlachan was the first to go, maybe actually frightened by the kidnappers, despite his long experience and his sacred language. One night, late on, just when the Arctic daylight was marrying the Arctic moonlight, he just picked up his anvil and left, the cold iron glinting beneath the infinite starry sky.

Jewel saw him, and followed, signalling with her arms that she would carry the anvil for him, which she duly did, across tundra and desert, over ocean and sea, through rivers and rapids, up mountains and down screes.

Angelina and Sergio followed her footsteps, crouching down to distinguish her footprints and the scratches of the trailing anvil from the millions of other marks in the depths of the forests or by the drying riverbeds.

‘There it is,’ they would exclaim when their probing fingers finally detected the sharp indentation of the horn or the more rounded shape of the heel, and they would rise and follow the direction of the trail. ‘This way.’

Yukon Joe accompanied them, forever flashing his pocket watch and asking, ‘What time is it?’, nevertheless always coming to their rescue by making all the native tribes across the world believe that he was willing to trade in his precious watch for a loaf of bread, or a jug of water, or a finnesko of wine; having managed to do the deal, then always making good his escape through the woods or trees, bearing Angelina under one arm and the anvil under the other, always following Jewel and Sergio’s cosmic trail to Gobhlachan.

The others left together late one night, to see Ted Hah in his lonesome cabin on the edge of the drilling-camp. They found him sitting on an upturned log by the wood fire, melancholically drinking bourbon.

‘Come on in. Come on away in,’ he shouted, but Archie and Brawn and Ludo and John Goblin stood at the door first reciting the Hogmanay song: ‘We’ve come tonight to this land to renew for you the year… Open the door and let us in…’

‘Well, howdy, folks – this is a nice surprise,’ said Ted Hah, rising to go over to the cabinet, where the crystal glasses sat beside a globe of the world. He took out four extra glasses and filled each one of them with bourbon.

‘Cheers!’ they all said together, and drank, solemnly and silently.

‘Well,’ said John the Goblin, ‘that’s it, then. Thanks very much for the work. I enjoyed it. And I made a profit too.’ He smacked the back pocket of his trousers. Brawn and Ludo remained quiet.

‘Well,’ Archie said, ‘it’s always like this, isn’t it? When it comes to the end, you never know what to say.’

‘Nothing. Say nothing,’ Ted said, ‘because you’ve said it all already.’ He came across to each of them, in turn, and shook their hands, firmly and warmly. ‘But could you guys just do me one great favour before you go. You see, my grandmamma was from Scotland, and I have a very warm and distant memory of us all gathering round the fire at Hogmanay to sing the great farewell song. Would you sing it for me?’

And Brawn began, in that deep baritone voice of his, right out of the drilled centre of the earth, singing: ‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind, should auld acquaintance be forgot for the sake of auld lang syne.’ And they all joined hands and moved in and out singing the great universal chorus: ‘For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne, we’ll tak’ a cup o kindness yet, for the sake of auld lang syne.’

And they began to drift out of the house, Brawn followed by Archie, followed by John the Goblin and Ludo, for the great journey back home.

And what a journey it was! Palaces where silken girls brought sherbet, hostile cities, dirty villages; travelling at night, sleeping in snatches, and the fear that this was all folly. Down and down, down below the snow line they reached a watermill and met a preacher who told them that the hole above the North Pole was, in actual fact, a blessing and not a curse.

‘Have you forgotten Jacob’s story already? See – there’s the ladder. Angels ascending and descending for all of you. All you have to do is jump on to the ladder. Anytime, anyplace. Don’t you know the story of the Tower of Babel? Don’t you know the story of Stephen, and how he looked up to heaven as they stoned him, where he saw the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God the Father? Can’t you see,’ said the preacher, ‘that the hole is actually the door? Go back, like the leper, to tell about the beginning of wisdom.’

‘All that was a long time ago,’ said Archie. ‘Of course, I’ve forgotten some of the details, and poor Gobhlachan and Olga and John the Goblin are now too long gone to verify the truth of it all.’

‘So how and when did you actually get back home then?’ he was asked.

And old Archie replied, ‘As with all endings, it happened much quicker than any of us thought. Yukon Joe we left in Toronto. Brawn stopped off at Vladivostok on the way home. We dropped Ludo off at Marseilles, where we’d found him. We then had three wild nights of partying in London with Angelina and Sergio, where we left them and a beautiful Indian meal at the Ashoka in Glasgow with Jewel before returning back home.’

‘And then? And then?’ he was always asked.

‘Ah, and then,’ he would say, ‘we all just got the ferry and the bus home – Gobhlachan sitting up there at the front, forever chatting to the driver. Olga forever staring out the window, just in case her horses turned up. And John the Goblin trying to cut some deals with the students up the back of the bus.’

‘And you? What about you?’ we would ask.

‘Ah, me,’ he would say, slowly. ‘I came back as I left. Came off the bus at the end of the village, still carrying my battered brown suitcase, and walked right down through the village. “There he is!” you could hear them cry. “Archie! Old Archie! Well, would you believe it.” And when I came back home it was all exactly as I left it. Believe it or not, Bella was still curled up there on the sofa, cutting her nails, one huge, hardened slice after another flying across the kitchen. And the son was still sitting there too, tapping the remote control, as if some mystery would suddenly illuminate itself on the screen.’

He lived to a ripe old age, did Archie. The north wind blew and never bothered him one little bit. The earth gave way, and the mountains fell into the heart of the sea, and all Archie said was, ‘Well, I told you so. But you wouldn’t believe me. Nor would you believe Gobhlachan or anyone else before me.’

Archie increasingly spent time with his old friends. On windless, moonlit nights, he could be heard talking to Gobhlachan down by the disused smithy, laughing above the sound of the hammer on the anvil. On warm spring nights, when Olga’s horses could be heard neighing down on the machair, Archie could be seen astride a wooden pole clopping across the sand. On warm summer nights, when you passed the old well in the centre of the village, sometimes you would hear the whispering sound of voices – John the Goblin and Archie, cutting the next deal.

But those stormy winter nights when the huge wind comes howling straight down from the north were best. Then you could hear them all: Brawn’s deep baritone voice, Ludo sailing after him, Jewel and Sergio and Angelina and Yukon Joe, and even Ted Hah, laughing, like a wind which can not be discovered, or covered, like a wind which would uproot the earth, were it not held down by gravity, or reason, or complete lack of faith and imagination.

And I departed from them and they gave me a wedge of butter on a flame and paper shoes and they sent me away with the bullet from a big gun on a long glassy road till they left me sitting here.

That’s how I heard it. And I left them there.

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