The Fanatic. James Robertson

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      ‘Sure. If you had a finished or even a half-finished manuscript, I’d read it. I’d consider it. But I couldn’t commit to anything on the basis of what you’ve told me. To be honest, Hugh, you should think about publishing it yourself.’

      ‘I wouldn’t know where to begin.’

      ‘Well, go back to the pocket guide to publishing you’ve obviously been reading and look in there. It’s really not that difficult these days. All you need is a computer and a DTP package. The technology’s sitting waiting for you, and once you’ve paid the printers, so is all the profit.’

      Hugh gave an incredulous laugh. ‘Listen to you, you’re talking yourself out of business.’

      She laughed back. ‘Publishing isn’t like any other business. Scottish publishing isn’t like any other publishing.’

      ‘Bullshit.’

      ‘It’s true. It may not be how it should be but it is. Scottish publishing is about avoiding anything that might drag you into a swamp of debt and drown you in it.’

      ‘No wonder it’s the country cousin of London then.’

      ‘Quite. Now get us another drink.’

      Hardie went up to the bar and ordered in his loud, boolie voice. It wasn’t offensive to Jackie, it went with his friendly, disarming smile, but she saw the old men glower at him suspiciously. Dawson’s was used to students but not to entrepreneurs. Jackie could still make out the Edinburgh merchant’s school accent underlying the mid-Atlantic drawl, but only because she knew it was there. The auld yins probably thought he was English.

      Waiting at the bar, Hardie thought about his chances with Jackie. She might have knocked him back on the book proposal, but she’d asked for another drink. She was nice enough looking – but not so she could afford to be choosy. She had thick dark hair and brown eyes, and cheeks that must have been podgy ten years before and would be again in another ten. The same went for her figure – short and tending to dumpiness. But warm and inviting for all that. He imagined her in a white fluffy bathrobe, pink from the bath. It was a heart-stirring thought.

      He also thought about his ghost. The old ghost had quit on him that morning, complaining of poor wages and conditions. He’d handed over the cape, staff, wig and rat, demanded the twenty pounds lie wage held back against the return of these ghostly accoutrements, and walked off, never to be seen again. You’d have thought he might have treated the twenty pounds as a kind of bonus, but no. His last words had been to the effect that Hardie was a miserable tight-arsed capitalist bastard and he hoped his trade would drop off. Hardie wasn’t unduly upset. The guy hadn’t done a convincing haunt for months.

      ‘This is probably a stupid question,’ said Jackie, when he told her his problem, ‘but why do you have to have a ghost anyway? Surely you can do the tour without one.’

      ‘Sure I can, Jackie, but a ghost tour without a ghost …? Come on. Look, in the main season we do three tours a day. The one in the afternoon doesn’t need a ghost, it’s broad daylight and it tends to be more, how can I put it, historical. Mary Queen of Scots, John Knox, Bonnie Prince Charlie, that kind of stuff. The six o’clock tour doesn’t need a ghost either: it’s still daylight, and it caters for the fat Yanks who are about to hurry back to their hotels for the usual haggis and bagpipes tartan extravaganza that’s laid on for them there. The tour is just an hors d’oeuvre. BPC features heavily again. But the nine o’ clock tour – that’s different. That’s the cream of ghost tours. It starts’ – his voice dropped and assumed an exaggerated tremor – ‘as the night draws in, and ends in darkness. The people who come on this tour expect a ghost. Some of them have been drinking all evening. They’re in high spirits. They’re Swedish inter-railers and rowdy English students and gobsmacked Australian backpackers. I charge extra for this tour. There are little tricks and hidden delights in store for the people who come on it. One of them is a ghost. I must have a ghost.’

      ‘You must have a ghost,’ Jackie repeated. She was looking past his shoulder towards the door. ‘How about him over there, then?’

      Hugh half-turned to look. A tall, slightly stooping man had just come in. He reached the bar in three long strides that seemed almost liquid in their execution, or as if he were treading through shallow water and the splashes of each step were left for a moment in the space where his foot had just been. He was over six feet, skinny and gaunt, his face so white you’d think he’d just walked through a storm of flour. He was almost bald apart from a few wild bursts of hair above the ears. He ordered a pint and while it was being poured stared grimly into space, seeming to aim his gaze along the length of his nose. Hugh Hardie was transfixed.

      ‘He’s perfect. My God, he’s perfect. You’re absolutely right, Jackie.’

      ‘He’s not the ghost to solve your problems. He’s out of my past.’

      ‘You mean to say you actually know this person?’

      ‘Sure. Haven’t seen him for years, right enough. We were at the uni together.’

      ‘This is uncanny. Quick, call him over.’

      ‘Now just hold on a minute. Like I said, I’ve not seen him for ages. I’m not sure that I want to renew the acquaintance.’

      ‘Don’t be sulky, Jackie. Get him over and we’ll toast your alma mater. Why ever not?’

      ‘Well, to be honest, he’s a bit weird. He was a postgraduate when I was doing final year Honours. He sat in on a course I was doing – First World War or something. The guy running the course was supervising his PhD. But he dropped out – never finished it as far as I know.’

      ‘Shame,’ said Hugh. ‘Get him over, won’t you?’

      ‘Wait, I said. He was weird. Gave me the creeps.’

      ‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re just writing him a great CV. He has got something, hasn’t he? To look at, I mean. That woman over there can’t stop checking him out. He’s disturbing her. Don’t you see?’

      ‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ said Jackie. ‘All the women in the class felt the same. You tried to avoid his eye. Not that he actually ever did anything, you understand.’

      ‘Some people have that, don’t they? That amazing ability to upset other people just by being themselves. They don’t have to do anything.’

      The old men, who had glanced at the man when he came in, had not paid him any attention since. Hugh, who made his living by exploiting how different people reacted to what they saw, noticed this and liked it. The old men were never going to be his customers. Jackie and the tourist were the ones who mattered, and they had the right responses. The barman, who probably saw the guy regularly, wasn’t bothered by him. The student seemed to have fallen asleep.

      ‘What’s his name?’ Hugh asked.

      Jackie shook her head.

      ‘It’s all right, I won’t shout it out or anything. I won’t embarrass you.’

      ‘Carlin,’ she said. ‘Alan, I think. No, Andrew. Andrew Carlin.’

      ‘Andrew!’ shouted Hugh. The others in the bar stared at him, and the student woke with a jerk. ‘Andrew Carlin! Over here!’

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