The Museum Of Doubt. James Meek
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twining over the sheet which got the screws and lifers going but the insistence in parenthesis that the ancient Egyptians had abandoned goat-hair duvets for duck-down ones when they discovered the aphrodisiac qualities of the now extinct Nilotic eider.
Almost everyone had been amazed he got sent down, he was so middle class, even the advocate was embarrassed, he hurried away afterwards and didn’t speak to anyone. I wasn’t surprised, though. Arnold was a dangerous driver. He’s a dangerous driver now. Whatever they did to him in prison, it didn’t change his overtaking habits. It was a gamble on a blind summit and he lost, collided with a car full of students from England. He killed two of them. Arnold went into an airbag but his wife in the passenger seat didn’t have one. She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Perhaps she’d been as unhappy as that. I don’t know. Anyway she went through the windscreen head-first. Straight away you imagine it happening in slow motion but it doesn’t, of course, you don’t see it like that any more than you see the flight of a shell from a gun. There’s a loud noise and in an instant, like a badly edited film, it jumps, it’s all arranged across the road, perfectly, peacefully, the broken cars, the glass, the bodies and the wheels spinning slowly.
Arnold was 36, same as me. His wife died about the time my divorce came through. Since the trial he’d seen even less of Jenny than I had. She didn’t think he’d killed her deliberately, no-one did. Before the accident Jenny said she liked the way he drove. Afterwards she didn’t hate her father: nothing so passionate. She went off him. She’d just started at art college and got a flat and never went round to see him any more, in jail or out. When they paroled him I expected him to take to drink, I don’t know why. He went teetotal and as soon as he got his licence back he was driving worse than before. That’s to say he was a good driver, very skillful, but always found a way to drive that was out beyond the edges of his skill and relied on luck to fill the space between.
I’d left my watch at home. The clock above the bar said 10.25 and the last boat was at 11. Someone told me that the landlord always set the clock ten minutes fast, so that left a good three quarters of an hour to get to Queensferry. You couldn’t rely on Arnold to use that time well, though. Of course everyone ran the risk that they might die on their way home from the pub. A loose slate might fall on their heads, or they might have a heart attack, get stabbed. What else could happen? There could be an earthquake. A predator could escape from the zoo. A predator could escape from his mates. But the chances were infinitessimal. It wasn’t something you thought about: Better watch on my way home from the pub in case I get killed. Driving with Arnold it was. Even if the chances of death doubled at the third decimal place, you wouldn’t put money on it, there was only one life. To have four gin and tonics and then go out the door thinking and now, perhaps, the afterlife, now, even before morning.
Arnold was coming over. Need a lift? he said.
No thanks.
He nodded at the door. I don’t think Siobhan’s coming back. Did you say something?
Yes.
Arnold jiggled his car keys. Last boat at 11, he said.
I’ll get a cab.
Come on.
No really Arnie, it’s great of you, I appreciate it, but I’m fine, I’m doing all right, taxis are good, they’re cheap, they’re reliable, they’re fast. Fast enough, I mean. Not too – yeah, fast enough. Don’t want to have you going out of your way.
He looked hurt. He fidgeted with his keys and looked around. He did seem astoundingly calm and sober for an Edinburgh pub on a Friday night. Con, he said, I don’t understand you. We’ve been drinking in this place for the past two years and we both know where we go at closing time. It’s not like we’re strangers. What is the deal with these taxis? D’you not get embarrassed when you’re getting out of the cab on the quayside and you see me driving up the ramp? D’you think I avoid the moon deck bar on a Friday night cause I like the Stoker’s Lounge better?
I had wondered about that. My face went the colour of the carpet in the Stoker’s Lounge. It’d been stupid to think he hadn’t noticed me trying to avoid him on the boat all this time.
I’m sorry, Arnie, I said. I don’t like the way you drive.
I hadn’t meant to say that. Anyway, he was alive, was he not?
I know, said Arnold. But I’m more careful now.
No you’re not. I’ve seen the way you go down the Queensferry Road.
That’s just the way it looks. That is me being careful. I don’t hit anything. I never hit anything. I make sure now. I’ve made sure ever since that time. It’s a science, it’s dynamics. Anyway, there’s plenty of time, there’s no need to hurry.
The clock said 10.35, i.e. 10.25, so he was right, there was plenty of time. And even though I’d seen him shoot past and slot his car at 60 through a space you wouldn’t try to park in, I’d never actually driven with him.
If you’re so worried about the taxi, said Arnold, you can give me a fiver if you like. He grinned.
A fiver? To Queensferry? I could get to Inverness on a fiver. And still have money left over for a deep-fried Brie supper and a chilled Vimto.
Make it ten then.
We went out to the car. We hadn’t got there before he’d hit me with some new apocrypha which might’ve made me change my mind if I hadn’t been thinking along the same lines, so much that I was hardly aware he’d said it.
The dice you’d need to roll to reflect the chances of your being involved in a car accident on any one trip, he said, would have so many faces that without a powerful microscope it would be indistinguishable from a perfect sphere.
What was that? I said, fastening the seatbelt. He repeated it while he started the car.
Bet you didn’t sell that to News International, I said.
No. I just thought of that one. It’s not for sale.
Private apocrypha, eh.
He didn’t say anything. That didn’t bother me because I was looking at the digital clock on his dashboard. We were out on the road and moving. Arnold was driving at just under the speed limit in built-up areas. Cars were passing us. The clock said 10.35.
Your clock’s wrong, I said.
I know, he said.
Right.
They were going to change the name to Kingsferry, said Arnold. In honour of the king who died falling off the cliff, you know, trying to catch the boat late at night.
That’s not such a good one, Arnie. Don’t think you’d get far with that.
It’s true! I’m off work now. No apocrypha in my free time. It’s true.
Why would they call it Kingsferry? They didn’t start calling Dallas Dead Presidentville after Kennedy got shot there.
Because that’s what it’s about. It’s not about folk crossing the river.
It is as far as I’m concerned. They could call them South Ferry Ferry and North Ferry Ferry and that’d make sense to me.
No, Con, said Arnold, turning to look at me, and even though we were still trundling along at 30, I wanted him to turn back and keep his eyes on the road. He looked worried for me, as if I was about to go out alone into the world without the things I needed to know to survive. If it was about folk crossing the river there’d be a bridge. A Forth road bridge. They could easily build one. It’d be open round the clock and no-one would ever have to be racing to get the last boat again.
We’re not racing, though, ’cause we’ve got plenty of time.
OK, but folk do. And they’re supposed to be all into public safety. I tell you what it is, it’s put there deliberately. It’s a deliberate exception. Because they know you can’t resist it. You want it. You want a place in the country where you can be provoked into taking a risk without going out