Huts46

Funerals bring forth the bloom of dark colours. I had on my black jacket, with a flash of red at the colour, which I didn’t think was too disrespectful, and an open necked shirt, that stretched to white, with rounded collar that fluttered out like dachsund ears. Wullie the Pole just wore what he usually did, apart from the dust jacket, as we stood waiting for the bus to take us to Glasgow. Then we had to get another bus to take us on to Linn Park, with its echoes of carnival rides and ice cream, felt that we would be going in the wrong direction. It was a strange choice of name for the dead space of the crematorium.

I paced and smoked and jabbed at the air with conversation. Wullie the Pole just stood at the bus stop, neither waiting, nor hurrying, like part of the landscape, and let it wash over him. Dr Fleming’s purple E-type Jaguar nosed cautiously out and over the hospital bridge. In a high pitched squeal of car testosterone, it roared past. We were exposed on that straight stretch of road, with nowhere to hide.

Dr Fleming had his car. We had the public bus. But Dr Fleming had given us the choice. A full day off for Archie Cairney’s funeral, or work our normal shifts. I don’t know what kind of calculations Wullie the Pole had made. But I’d worked it out. A long lie in the morning. An hour to Glasgow. An hour back. An hour for the funeral. I was still ahead.

Dr Fleming’s car surged past us, going in the opposite direction, back towards the hospital. I looked the other way, listening to the drone of the Corpy bus lazily circling the lanes, like a school bully, too big for the roads. Dr Fleming glided into the pavement beside us, leaning over the seat and pushing the passenger door open. The Corpy bus, geared up, and pushed past us, leaving the imprint of its diesel engine on our throats.

‘Get in,’ said Dr Fleming.

I scrambled for the back seat, as Wullie the Pole eyed me contemptuously, settling himself into the front, before leaning back and nonchantly flicking the lock up. Dr Fleming adjusted the mirror, whether to look at me, or the road, I wasn’t quite sure. I ducked down and eased into the anonymity of the back seat, smelling of newly minted leather, which somehow reminded me of old cinema seats. It even had its own little ashtray, which made me want to spark up and have a fag. But I wasn’t quite sure how the windows worked, and didn’t want to break anything, so didn’t bother.

‘I’m glad you chaps could make it,’ said Dr Fleming, as if we were all old Harrovians going on a jolly jape, which as usual, in my apologetic tongue-tied way, made me want to pull out a Kalashnikov.

Instead, I finally stuttered out, in response to Wullie the Pole saying nothing and just looking at the road ahead: ‘Glad to make it!’

But I don’t think Dr Fleming noticed as he drove his car with the authority of a person that owns the roads.

‘The last funeral I was at was my father’s’, remarked Dr Fleming, as if that was common knowledge. ‘Wonderful man. Wonderful,’ said Dr Fleming, with a choke in his throat, taking his eye of the road momentarily, to use the cigarette lighter, to bring the reassuring wealth of a lit cigar, to his father’s memory.

‘He was a doctor too,’ said Dr Fleming.

‘Yessss,’ said Wullie the Pole, slowly drawing it out, in a way that suggested that he knew him, or at least knew he was a doctor.

I wasn’t surprised. Dr Fleming’s son was a doctor. Dr Fleming’s daughter was even a doctor. Julius Caesar probably brought over a Fleming as a physician when he invaded Britain. A Fleming probably stood by while Hadrian’s Wall was being constructed in case any workers nipped their fingers with the cruel stones. It seemed Fleming blood and bone knitted together into the form of a doctor from conception.

‘A great man,’ said Dr Fleming reflectively, ‘and he didn’t have it easy,’ which made me want to puke up in his nice, newly upholstered, rich man’s car.

‘Still had some shrapnel in him from the First World War. They couldn’t do anything about it, of course. He had to live with it,’ Dr Fleming said admiringly.

‘That’s a shame,’ I muttered.

‘No. No.’ Dr Fleming half turned, as if he had to explain further. I didn’t have the authority to tell him to watch the road. But Wullie the Pole, cleared his throat and that seemed to work. ‘My father never complained. He wouldn’t think of such a thing. He was a sergeant in the Fifth Argyll and Sutherlanders.’ Dr Fleming back seemed to straighten and there was warmth in his voice that made him sound almost like a normal human. ‘They tried to make him an officer, but he wouldn’t take the commission. He couldn’t afford the Mess bills. In those days an officer had to settle his drink and food bill himself. And the amount they were paid would never have been enough. So he stayed a Sergeant. And when he came out of the army he started his own business. Then he trained to become a doctor.’

Dr Fleming made it seem so easy, like a straight line, drawn from one thing to another. Wullie the Pole nod showed that even he respected Dr Fleming’s father.

‘One thing my father always told me was to find out who is responsible and tell them if anything goes wrong, then it’s their fault,’ Dr Fleming said, in his own idiosyncratic way, which, used a lot of words to say nothing much. But Wullie the Pole sat up a little straighter in his seat.

As we got out of the warmth of the Jag at Linn Park Crematorium, the wind seemed to whistle through the sunlight and catch us unaware. I instinctively pulled my jacket closer around me as if testing it for warmth. Head down, I followed behind Dr Fleming and Wullie the Pole, making the most of the chance to light up a fag,and thinking it a cruel irony not being allowed to smoke inside. The crematorium had a number of rooms, back to back to each other, in case there was a sudden outbreak of funeralitis.

But there only seemed to be us and another two men waiting, hands by their side, wearing the calling cards of funerals long black Crombie coats, and furtively holding fags, like school boys, as if someone was going to come along and tell them to nip it.

Wullie the Pole screwed up his eyes. One of them was the dead spit of Archie Cairney. As we clustered together, screening ourselves from the wind, like chickens in a hen run, Dr Fleming introduced himself and us, as if we were part of his great entourage

‘And this is John Cairney,’ said Dr Fleming, ‘Archie’s brother’.

We shook hands. There was nothing in the hospital notes that suggested that he had a brother, one that looked so much like him, he might well have been a twin.

All John Cairney, said was ‘nice to meet you,’ as he limply shook our hands. He spoke with his mouth closed, as if he had something to hide, reining in the words, with no discernable accent, so that he could have came from the Gallowgate or Botswana.

The other man was less than five feet, but he had a beard covering his pointed chin, to make up for it. Somehow, I expected a deep masculine, one of the seven kinds of dwarf’s voice, but it was as limp as John Cairney’s handshake. ‘Hi,’ he said, waving at us. ‘Do you think we should wait a bit longer…or just go in?’

I wasn’t sure who he was. He didn’t have any of the orthodox marking of a priest, or vicar, but he seemed to have taken up that role, which somehow made it seem not right, illegal even.

John Cairney looked at his watch. Dr Fleming looked at his watch. And if I had a watch I’d have also looked at it. But no one else suddenly appeared as we drifted in the high wind, like jellyfish, towards the safety of the crematorium doors.

The little man took up the rostrum of priesthood and took us through the ceremony. The Book of Common Prayer was similar to the Catholic Missal, but the hymns were different. And it was that which haunted us. The vicar invited us to accompany him, but he sang every one the same, hand on heart, with his eyes closed, like a drunken dirge, but we were sobered by the experience and with each glottal stop, I hid, as best I could, further and further behind my red face, and buried myself in the hymnbook, as if it contained my salvation. The vicar asked us if we wanted to take communion. I wasn’t sure if I should, it being a filthy Protestant trick, but I didn’t want to stand myself in the pew so followed behind Wullie the Pole.

As the coffin slid away, with the swish of a magician’s curtain, to the back room, to await the eternal fire, the little vicar gathered us together to pay our final respects.

‘Is there anything you’d like to share?’ the vicar said, his eyes sweeping over us and settling on John Cairney.

‘I didn’t really know him,’ John Cairney said, shuffling from foot to foot and looking to Wullie the Pole.

‘He smoked Woodbine,’ said Wullie the Pole, carefully enunciating the brand name, reaching out and touching the wood of the coffin reverentially, as if that was an old Polish tradition.

‘Terrific mechanic,’ offered Dr Fleming, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe a cruel God had deprived him of Archie’s service.

I didn’t know what to say. My face said it all. It got red enough to heat the coffin, but mercifully they looked away. Maybe that’s what grace is, suddenly being able to see something. ‘He was a great mimic,’ I blurted out, with a big smile, because it was true. Archie Cairney had Wullie the Pole’s stop-start English from the voice to the mannerisms. And he could do the incredibly long vowels of Dr Fleming. And he could do any one of the patients.

John Cairney stood at the door, that only the living used, out of the crematorium, and shook each of her hand as we left. He was smiling now, even as we went through the ritual of looking him in the eye and saying, ‘I’m so sorry’, even though it was a lie, as if what I’d said earlier had put bones on the memory of the brother he never knew.

‘You’ll come for a meal and a drink’ John Cairney said, slapping us on the back, as we waited and watched each other outside.

‘No,’ said the vicar, once more dressed as a normal dwarf man, I’ve got something else on, and he sidled away towards his clapped out Morris Minor.

Dr Fleming had his car keys at the ready to show what a real car was like. ‘No,’ he said blowing out his cheeks, ‘I’d really love to, but…HOSPITAL BUSINESS’.

Wullie the Pole ducked under the cover of that remark and repeated it, ‘hospital business,’ he also said trudging behind Dr Fleming.

John Cairney looked at me expectantly. Hospital business was shaped on my tongue and the half hearted sick hospital smile was imprinted on my face. I was half turned ready to go with them.

‘It’s The Grovener,’ said John Cairney, desperately, but that made it even worse, the price of a single drink being enough to live on for a week. ‘And its free,’ he said.

I held my ground. If a genie had suddenly popped up offering three wishes, free drink would have been a must for any decent Scot. John Cairney must have seen the indecision in my eyes. ‘Free food. Free drink. As much as you like. All free.’

Dr Fleming’s car didn’t even slow down as he passed me. I counted up the number of frees and they came to a lot. A black hackney cab pulled up the engine ticking; the meter going round like a Frisbee. ‘Ok,’ I said, finally making the long jump into the back of the cab.

The Grovener was full of the kind of people if I’d a tie on I’d have taken it off as a matter of principal. Dr Fleming’s kind of people. The food was ok if you liked lots of burnt cow and undercooked green potatoes, on a small plate. I’d much rather have eaten the vinegar soaked paper off a fish supper.

The first drink to appear miraculously was a pint of lager. When I finished that another one appeared at my elbow. I tried a malt whisky and even though I didn’t even like it, ordered a double, because if it was free, a single was no use. Brandy was terrible. Gin would make a blind man throw up. Even the foreign drinks the Sambucas were better than that. John Cairney tried to tell me, you were meant to light it, or some such nonsense, but I didn’t have time for that. I just threw it back like a normal person.

I think I’d wandered down into another little more intimate bar in another part of the hotel by that point. There was a very pretty little girl working there. She had on the daft little tartan skirts the staff were obliged to wear, with a horrible brooch that was meant to look like some kind of green heather. It looked nice on her dangly breasts. She told me she was some kind of student, but she wasn’t, because she looked a bit like Mary Russell. And I tried to explain to her I was some kind of student too. I didn’t say nursing, because that sounded a bit poofy, but she had taken a step back, which showed she didn't believe me. And she wouldn’t serve me, because she said I’d had enough.

‘But it’s free,’ I said, exasperated, as she looked at me in just the way that Mary would, ‘and you can take one for yourself!’

I had to shout John Cairney to come down from the other bar and tell her it was free. But he took too long. Some other guy came and said I’d have to leave.

John Cairney was handing the black cab driver a fiver and telling him to take me home. Just because he was rich. A fiver! That was a week’s wages. I knew what to do. Get out and get the bus home and keep the change. But the taxi driver must have known my plans, because the next thing he was shaking me awake, plonking me outside my house and telling me to ‘beat it’; the ungrateful bastard.