Part Fourteen:LOVED AND UNLOVED

Buster tried reading an old magazine that some previous inhabitant had left in the room but he could not get beyond the second paragraph of any of its articles.

He paced back and forwards across the threadbare carpet. He hummed and hawed, sighed and rolled his eyes in theatrical exaggeration.

He stared forlornly out of the window like a fat, bald Rapunzel waiting for a rescuer. He flounced down on the bed, whose springs registered their distress loudly, closed his eyes and wished that he could doze away the couple of hours until his next meal was due. It was no use. He could not even settle to dozing.

The splendours of that wonderful Garden had spoiled him for this gloomy place. The memory of its light and colour rebuked the shadows contained between these four walls, but outside the sky was still blue and the clouds scudding across it were still as big and fleecy and Buster could stand the confinement no longer.

He grabbed his coat, for it was still only Spring in Edinburgh, and his little blue transistor radio, and rejoiced at the sound of his room door slamming shut behind him.


Outside the Spring breeze was still fresh in the street. He sat down on the step, leaned against the handsome, black New Town railings and turned on his radio.

Across the street a cat dozed on top of a wall. Buster wondered,idly, if it was his acqaintance of the previous evening and thought it might feel nice to go over and stroke it but then he thought better of the idea. Cats had to get their forty winks where they could. They were up all night after all.

In the living room, just behind him, the old man was also drifting in and out of sleep and between two worlds. He could hear music coming from that beloved older world which, as his years grew more advanced, he found easier and easier to return to.

He knew the music well. It was fiddle music. Wedding music. Strangely, though, he was beginning to hear it even when he was fully awake.

"Surely not", he muttered to himself. This was wedding music and it belonged to that other time - not this moment.

It made him think of his bride, now far beyond the shadows and so, free of them, and he looked upon her again with the eye of the young man he once was.

The fiddle music only got louder. "Surely not", he said again. And yet the music persisted. Now Josef was fully awake. It was real music. There was no doubt. So where was it coming from?

He raised himself unsteadily on to his feet and hobbled over to the window, too impatient for an answer to bother looking for a walking stick.

When he saw the scene in the street outside he laughed. He could not help himself. His strange little guest just seemed to have that effect on him. Josef was sure that the Greeks had a word for this phenomenon - or was it the Romans? It didn't matter. He grinned like an idiot who could not help himself as he watched Buster with the little blue radio clapped to his ear, swaying back and forth in time to the music.

Josef tapped on the window.



There was tea and cakes as before. And shortbread. There were the old man's memories and the gallery of family and friends looking out from their silver frames, all as before.

This time, though, Buster had already been introduced to them and so, in his book, they were now his friends too. After tea and cake, when the old man had momentarily tired of talking and lay back in his chair staring at the ceiling,Buster thought that it would not be disrespectful to, once again, visit the faces to pay his respects.

He worked his way along the line of photographs until he came to one of a delicately featured young woman whose mass of black curls spilled out from under her Wedding Headdress. Buster fell instantly in love. He clasped the picture to his bosom and stared soulfully out of the window and up to the blue infinite. His emotions were too overwhelming to be constrained by this room.

The old man studied him, smiling indulgently. He did not begrudge the little man his moment. He was not at all offended by Buster's handling of the photographs. He meant no offence. He was welcome "at the table". Why should not a little of joys remembered lap over his guest. There were enough of them to share.

When at last Buster had composed himself, he crossed the room and reverently placed the picture in the old man's lap. Josef, picking it up, looked at the long lost bride for whose benefit the music had been played and then at Buster whose eyes were now a pool of unspoken questions and motioned him to sit down.

The old man knew how to tell a story all right. His words may have been halting, and sometimes barely audible, but they soon began to work their magic on Buster who sat with his hands folded on his lap, his eyes tight shut and a beatific smile plastered all over his silly face.

And Josef's words swirled around him and into his consciousness and deeper and deeper and before very long and, with a sense of helpless wonder, the old man's words became vision in Buster's mind's eye and, before much longer, concentrating hard with eyes still screwed tight shut, he could feel the room around him and smell the wedding flowers and feel the very presence of the guests at the wedding.

He knew full well that he could stay in this gathering just as long as he remembered to keep his eyes tight shut and for as long as the old man kept on talking.

Now he fancied that he was walking the length of a long banqueting table set with a table cloth of the finest white lace and filled with candle light that danced across the silver tabkleware and recorded its glow in the faces of the guests who turned to smile benevolently as he passed by the backs of their chairs.

There were no uniforms here, the little man noticed. There was no-one shouting at him either or nudging their neighbour and sniggering as he passed by. He was the only one on his feet. He stood out like a sore thumb but he did not feel in the least self conscious. He did not feel like a stranger here.

Near the head of the table, where the bride and groom sat, there was an empty chair. He took his place, bowing and smiling to as many of the members of the wedding as he could see, not wishing to leave anyone out.

Looking down at his plate, he noticed that there was some delicacy which he did not quite recognise set before him and also a glass of wine, the colour of rubies, to hand. For a brief moment he was beguiled by the effect of the candle light on the colour of the wine but, for once in his life, it was not food or drink that interested him.

He looked up from the plate and the wine and the first gaze that met his was that of the bride. Black curls peaked out from under her headdress just as they had in the photograph but now here she was in the flesh almost close enough to touch, close enough to smell her scent and she was regarding Buster with the sort of affectionate expression appropriate to a much loved old friend on such a happy occassion as this.

Buster was very sure that he had done nothing to deserve this attention and tried to look away, embarrassed, but her gaze held him in thrall and the smile melted all his awkwardness away and soon it felt as though his tired old skin had melted away too, to be replaced by a new one that would serve to protect him from all the vicissitudes that life might throw his way.

If people laughed at him in future what of it? If they shouted at him, or scowled or were cruel with their tongues........well none of that would penetrate this new skin.

He felt completely at ease in this new skin. The weariness of all his travels, all the miles and all the strange places and different rooms and all the rainy days and cold nights and loneliness that lay behind him slipped from his shoulders. Oh, if he could stay here forever, safe among those happy faces would that not be the most wonderful thing. If there were no more cold station platforms, or strange beds or unfriendly faces would that not be .......heaven.

His eyes were still tight shut and somewhere, in the background he could still hear Josef's voice. The air in this world was heavy with the scent of roses and velvet with the glow of candlelight and ringing with the sound of laughter and, when he dared to look again, the bride was still smiling at him from under her black curls. She seemed to be holding him safely in the bosom of this gathering and Buster smiled shyly back at her, glad that there would be no more cold nights or strange beds.

But, just at the summit of his happiness the bride's smile started to fade and the features of her face seemed to move around in front of his eyes and try as he might he could not will them to reorder themselves and it was then that he realised that he could not hear the old man's voice anymore.

When Buster opened his eyes again he saw that the landlord was fast asleep in the big leather armchair. The room was silent and the music and laughter from that other world, which, at this moment, still seemed much more real to Buster, had gone to silence itself.

He lifted the framed photograph from the old man's lap and replaced it in the spot he had picked it up from. Then, one by one, he bade farewell to all the other faces in all the other photographs and left the old man to his dreams.




As he climbed the stairs Buster envied his friend, for the old man could return to that world any time he wanted to, but he, himself, would have to be invited.



Driscoll lay propped up on his bed chain smoking. He was convinced now that, notwithstanding the commercial transaction that ended it, his recent encounter had been some sort of "visitation" - a judgement on the cruelty of his younger self.

He had made on honest attempt to sort out the "whys and the wherefores" but it had just made his head spin and now he was casting around for distractions that might make him just forget about the whole thing.

He was not having much success. The radio was no help.. it was tuned in to one of those programmes where husbands request songs for wives that "mean the whole world to me" and wives laud husbands for being "a loving and caring and wonderful father to our three smashing kids". Sons put mothers on pedestals and daughters doted on dads.

Driscoll sneered and sniffed at every mention of fillial devotion and every wittering from uxorious husbands. Eventually, it was too much, too high a price to pay to fill the silence, and he switched off with such force that the knob almost came off in his hands.

It was understandable, particularly in his case. No-one likes to be reminded of the things that life is currently denying them, still less the fact that they once had those things and threw them away or let them slip through their fingers.

There was always whisky of course, he thought. It never let you down. Skilled men in distilleries throughout Scotland were paid good money to make sure that it didn't. No, whisky was a reliable companion that gave comfort on demand without argument or condemnation.

Driscoll looked around the room for the half bottle he thought he still had before remembering, with a jolt of disappointment, that he had finished it off shortly after his "ghost" had left with his cash.

He sighed at the inevitability of his situation. There was no doubt about it. It all kept returning to the question of the money. If it had been just enough to keep him bowling along for another few days things would have been different. It would have been simple enough to find another no hoper and put the whole bundle on that. The plan was bound to work a second time. Not even a haunted embezzler could be unlucky enough to win twice in a row on a 100 - 1 shot.

But it was not a little money. It was a lot of money and it was only now dawning on him just how much. It was enough to get him out of the country, perhaps to somewhere warm where his bones didn't ache for most of the year. Maybe even.........he looked at his reflection in the wardrobe mirror as if for confirmation of the possibility...maybe even a chance to start over.

His grizzled reflection held Driscoll in its gaze and seemed reluctant to let him turn away just yet. It seemed to be asking the question Driscoll had been trying to bury: "Do you really think you deserve a new start when you haven't paid for the past yet?"

Somewhere, deep down in Driscoll's soul, the need for punishment and atonement was stirring.