Archie and the North Wind (8 page)

‘It all starts with the sun,’ says Professor Kimberley Strong, an expert in atmospheric physics at the University of Toronto. Solar radiation emitted by the sun travels through space and strikes the Earth, causing regions of unequal heating over land masses and oceans. This unequal heating produces regions of high and low pressure.

The atmosphere tries to equalise those pressures, so you get movement of air from a region of high pressure to a region of low pressure. Scientists call this the pressure of gradient force, and it is the fundamental force behind wind.

Earth’s rotation adds a twist to the story. While wind would normally move in a straight line, the spinning of the planet beneath makes the wind appear to follow a curved path. This is known as the Coriolis effect, which deflects winds to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere. There is no Coriolis effect at the equator. The faster the wind blows, the more it is deflected by the spinning of the Earth.

‘Ah,’ thought Archie, ‘it all starts with the sun! So I need to go to the sun.’ But he knew the things that were impossible. He would burn. Even at night-time. In the old Gaelic story the wind and the sun had a contest.

A small boy is going to school on a cold winter’s day, with his coat wrapped tightly around him.

‘Of course I’m stronger that you,’ boasted the wind, swirling around the weak sun. And there, hidden behind the dark clouds, the sun brooded, like Gordon Brown; quiet, fully aware of her own strength and power.

‘I’ll show you,’ roared the wind. ‘Do you see that small boy down there? That insect-like creature crawling along the ground down there on the earth? I bet I can force his coat off before you can!’ And the wind filled up his lungs and puffed out his cheeks and blew and raged and roared and the more he blew the tighter the wee boy fastened his coat round his body, turning his back to the angry, exhausted wind.

‘Ah!’ said the sun, stretching herself out beyond the clouds, her million slender fingers pushing all the darkness to one side, ‘Now let me glow.’

And she shone, bright and red and hot. And the small boy, steam rising from his soaking coat, began to perspire, finally flinging off his coat and lying down on the drying grass, staring up into the electric blue sky, a grass stalk idly stuck between his whistling lips.

And the wind sulked, off back into his cave, to regather for another day.

Archie left the hotel and walked down Sauchiehall Street in the evening light. Incredible how short the girls’ skirts all were. He stood a while in the doorway of a store called Topshop looking at folk streaming by, much like tides on the shoreline. He caught sight of himself in the shop mirror, the beard stubble rooting white, the hair thinning. How had he grown so old all of a sudden? In a single night. He remembered John the Goblin, who would have been well over eighty now, had he survived. Cancer, after all these roll-ups. Though he was still leaping across the sand dunes in the mirror, his fag tin shimmering in the sun in the back pocket of his trousers.

Was he John Goblin to those rushing by? If he existed. Where did the old go on a Friday evening, anyway? Did they abandon the town centres – were they bussed out to the bingo-halls in the suburbs – or had they been shipped out there anyhow a long time ago, never to return? How they had all gone to Canada, sailing like handkerchiefs.

He went into a pub, but it was like nothing he remembered. No smoke. Poor John Goblin. No one playing dominoes or pool or cards: just huge throbbing music and vast video screens perched above every corner of the room, where even more young women with bare navels gyrated across the heavens. These were no giants, but giantesses, lithe and lissome and willowy. On some of the screens men played football, as seen from above: they moved like pawns, or warriors, across the starry sky.

Archie asked for a beer and was given a bottle, without a glass. He looked around him and saw that all the young people in the bar were drinking just like that, right out of the bottle. He felt at home. That’s what he’d always done, swilling down a whole bottle of milk in the heather, or a whole bottle of ale at the machair, or a whole half-bottle of whisky at the fank. This was just home with different pictures and music.

He smiled at two young women standing at the bar next to him. They smiled back. ‘Noisy,’ he tried to say to them, but the music drowned out the word and by the time he thought of another word they’d gone, carrying their drinks on a tray into the darkness.

A man was standing on the other side, so he tried the same word on him, but he just put his hand to his ear and shook his head, meaning: ‘Listen, mate, there’s absolutely no point in trying to talk in here. We’re like fish underwater, gawping at each other. Words can’t be heard here, so don’t even bother trying.’ And he too had gone, carrying his single beer bottle in his hand to the middle of the floor, where a crowd was dancing in sacred circles of their own, gesticulating to one another.

Don’t do it, a voice inside Archie’s head said. Whatever you do, don’t make an idiot of yourself by going out there and dancing. And since it was the only voice which he could hear, Archie listened. But then the surprising thing happened – this girl came up to him and handed him a piece of paper on which was written: ‘Hi. My name is Jewel. Would you like to dance?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course I would,’ he said as she took him by the hand and led him to the centre of the crowded floor, where all the young people moved backwards and forwards, each with an open bottle in hand.

Jewel swayed to and fro in front of him like – well, like a jewel, of course, all glittering and shining in a silver top with sparkling purple trousers; though Archie thought of her more as a spray of the ocean, the way in which on a late spring day when the tide changes, the sea itself rises higher and moves in, splashing senselessly against the rocks.

Holding on to his bottle, he managed to keep sight of Jewel as she moved round the floor, occasionally making rapid hand signals to friends she passed as she danced, occasionally pecking other girls on the cheek, occasionally greeting other dancers with a sharp clapping noise of her palms, going rat-a-tat-tat, tat-a-tat-tat. It took Archie the whole beat of the dance and more to realise that all these young people were actually talking to each other in sign language.

Just like himself and Gobhlachan. The world interpreted through signs. A universe understood with a movement, and misunderstood through some invisible gesture. Archie tried to understand the conversation, but couldn’t. The girls would raise a finger, touch an ear lobe, smack the back of a hand with two fingers from the other, while the men pounded a fist against an open palm or brushed a wrist with one, two, three fingers. Archie had no idea where a word or sentence began or ended, or how you distinguished between movement and speech, or when the dance finished and the talk started, as if such mattered. It was all talk or dance.

Jewel suddenly stopped dancing and moved over to a table in the corner, beckoning him to follow.

Once seated, she made a whole series of quick movements with her hands, but halfway through she also clearly understood that he was a foreigner and that he wasn’t understanding a single thing she was saying. So she lowered the small pencil from behind her ear and wrote on the stacked pieces of paper set on every table.

‘Where are you from?’ she wrote.

‘Elitrobe,’ he wrote back.

‘Eh?’ she replied.

‘What is this?’ he asked.

‘A club,’ she wrote. ‘Deaf. But not dumb! Ha!’

‘What’s your name?’ her mouth asked.

‘Archie,’ he said.

‘Look,’ she said. She placed the forefinger of her right hand onto the forefinger of her left. ‘E,’ her mouth said, soundlessly. The same finger to the thumb of the left hand. ‘A,’ she said. The same finger to the middle finger of the left hand, and he understood that to be ‘I’.

How eloquent, the forefinger.

She was from Ayr, though her grandmother was from Lochinver. And he? Travelling. Where? O – north. North? Aye, north. North like Inverness? No. North like Spitsbergen. North like Alaska. North like Nansen. Fridtjof Nansen.

‘That far?’ her fingers said.

They stopped talking and resumed dancing. For a while, Gobhlachan disappeared.

‘Do you believe there’s a new story?’ he asked her as they danced, though she didn’t hear.

But that didn’t make much difference. How beautiful she was: tall and slim, like a pole. To carry a creel, the women wore an old
còta
, a loose kilted skirt, rolled up to form a
dronnag
, a creel pad on the lower part of the back, where the creel could rest. Along with a well-made breastband, this made it much easier for women to carry their burdens, and even made it possible for them to carry much heavier loads. The male islander of this period had no desire for women who were tall and slender. Strong, sturdy, broad-backed women who could also help to push the boats up the beaches were appreciated.

Her nails painted red, her body moving endlessly in front of him like the seismographic waves he once saw on an
X
-ray machine at the local cottage hospital.

Everyone at the club was going to a party at the flat of a couple who’d just gotten engaged that evening – Belfast Tommy and Frieda from Orkney. They had a flat in Ingram Street in the merchant city.

‘Come if you want,’ she said.

They all walked home together down Hope Street. McDonald’s was still open and some of them went in there. Archie and Jewel entered with them. How bright the lights were after the darkness of the pub. They bought chips and Coke and went upstairs.

‘Jewel?’ he asked.

‘Shorthand,’ she wrote back, ‘for Julie Ann.’

‘Ah!’ he said. And added, ‘
Sìleas
– the Gaelic for Julie. And Jewel means
Seud.
’

‘Sìleas Seud then,’ she said.

The conversation was broken and fragile, like all conversations. She taught him a little by hand; he wrote now and then. How the club met monthly, on the last Friday. His age. She? Don’t ask. Why the invitation-note? Just that she saw him and that he’d reminded her of someone. Her grandfather? At least a laugh. You can recognise danger, other senses compensate for the loss of some. Like the antelopes: they can smell danger beneath the savannah swamp.

‘I’ve got a fortnight,’ her fingers said. ‘Holidays. Camping in Poolewe, but the Pole will do.’

Another laugh.

‘One tent.’

‘Two sleeping-bags.’

‘Right.’

‘Sure, sure.’

‘Bird and bush.’

‘Fine.’

‘Done.’

Since the world was
24
/
7,
a travel agency was still open next to McDonald’s, Central Station. It was called
GO4U
.

‘Let’s,’ their bodies said. ‘Let’s look anyway.’

And while the others walked down towards Ingram Street, Archie and Sìleas entered the shop, laughing.

Not only was there the usual row of computers where you could choose your own holiday, but the agency also had a row of desks where the agents sat. They went over to an Indian girl sitting at Desk
5
, which was headed Aurora Borealis.

Had they brochures for travelling north? Near the Arctic Circle?

She opened a drawer and handed them four thick brochures –
North Pole Ski Expeditions
;
North Pole Dogsled Expeditions
;
North Pole Champagne Flights
, and one simply called
Seasonal Specials
.

‘These are the only brochures we have in stock,’ she said. ‘They’re all run by the one company – the Northwest Passage Polar Adventures Company – though there are others. They of course have a website too, if you want to check that out.’ And she wrote
polarexplorers.com
, in a spindly line.

They took the brochures and made their way to Thomas and Frieda’s flat. No one bothered much with them. Some danced; some ate; some watched a silent Russian film on
DVD
; couples hid in various nooks and crannies. The flat had a miniature roof garden and Archie and Jewel climbed up there via the attic stair. They looked at Glasgow, all lit down below them. The silent decorative cranes in Govan, the windmills beyond Bearsden.