‘Oh.’ She relaxed. ‘If he was at your Professor’s. I suppose it’s all right then.’

‘It was the night I was ill. When I—’

‘I remember the night you were ill,’ she said.

‘Well, will you keep it for me then? After all, I might be out – if he came for it.’

‘You’re very eager to get rid of it. Or is it that you don’t want to meet this man Brond?’

‘No,’ I lied. ‘When I was ill, he came to see me in the hospital. He said he would get me a job in the summer.’

‘I don’t see why he would do that.’ For the second time, her steady gaze disconcerted me. ‘Why would he do that if he’d only met you the once?’

Twice. I had met him twice. Only the first time didn’t happen: it was a lie, a delirium. I had been sick.

‘I don’t like any of this,’ she said.

She turned to chop vegetables on the board. I had the crazy notion that I wanted to rest my head against her and tell her about the boy Brond had pushed over the bridge. It didn’t happen, I would tell her; it’s an impossible thing that never happened. Only, I would say to her, I don’t understand why every detail gets clearer. For something that couldn’t have happened, that didn’t seem fair. Chunk! Chunk! Chunk! Jackie hammered down the knife.

‘You take your parcel,’ she said. ‘If someone comes when you’re out, I’ll tell them to come back.’

With the parcel under my arm, I had the door open to go.

The blows came down on the chopping board and she raised her voice over them, ‘I don’t like your friend Margaret or her parcel. Give it to Muldoon. Get rid of it somehow. Give it back to the girl.’

‘But why?’

In my excitement, I went over to her and when she ignored me took her arm and held it to stop the stupid pounding. Pieces of vegetable were scattered off the edge of the board. She pulled from me.

‘Why must I get rid of it?’ I asked her. It was senseless expecting that she could know. Senselessly, I wanted someone to help me. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

There had to be something wrong, since Brond had come into my life again.

FIVE

To give the parcel back to Margaret Briody I had first to find her. I didn’t know where she lived, but she had still to get fixed up with a summer job so it was possible she might be in the Queen Margaret Union.

The entry hall looked forlorn in the morning. I went upstairs to the coffee room. There was no one in it or behind the counter. Going back down, I noticed how the light peeled back broken tiles and drew dirty brown scuffs on the concrete walls.

The hall that had been empty was filled by a tall girl who looked as much at home as if her father had bought the University as a coming of age gift.

‘I’m looking for somebody,’ I said to her.

‘Aren’t we all?’

It was no time for philosophy. The parcel stuck under my wet armpit like a limpet mine.

‘Her name’s Margaret Briody. She’s just finished her first year.’

‘So has everybody else. Finished the year, I mean. There aren’t many people about.’

She showed signs of moving on.

‘Isn’t there any way of checking if she’s in the building?’

‘Hold on.’

She disappeared behind a frosted glass door. When she closed it behind her, I saw there was a notice taped to the glass: Keep Out – This Means You. Music from a transistor started on the floor above and then turned off. Time passed.

‘Margaret Briody.’

I felt my ears twitch like a rabbit’s. There was a tannoy just above me.

‘Margaret Briody. Wanted in the hall, please. Margaret Briody in the hall, please.’

The tall girl came out.

‘If she’s about, that should fetch her.’

‘Will she hear that upstairs?’

She laughed.

‘You can’t get away from it. Even the loos are wired.’

When it had become pointless to wait any longer, I wandered down the hill to the Men’s Union. It was another hot day. A small wind lifted dust from the gutters and blew it round the wheels of parked cars.

After the empty spaces in QM, the Men’s Union seemed busy. A group were talking on the steps; I heard voices from the billiard room; in the lounge a scatter of figures nested in the deep shabby armchairs.

‘Have you broken anyone’s jaw since I saw you last, dear pacifist?’

He is wearing a tartan waistcoat louder than a pipe band in a phone booth. Even in this heat he looks cool, despite the fact I know he’s wearing woollen underwear down to his ankles – he always does and has a theory about it. He is a very old student in anybody’s book.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asks. ‘Are you ill?’

I sat down and the room settled steady again.

‘I just remembered when I last saw you.’

He stared at me suspiciously.

‘I suppose there’s a joke there I’m missing for some reason.’

I shook my head. I didn’t have the strength to explain. He nibbled a biscuit with large yellow teeth; there was a plateful of them in front of him, round small ones sparkling with crusted sugar.

‘It’s annoying,’ he complained, swivelling his big head and spraying as he chewed. ‘The people in this place get more ridiculously juvenile every year.’

‘There’s a reason for that, isn’t there?’ I responded automatically.

He had to be in his fifties, if those scars he claimed from the rifle butts of patriots were anything to go by. A life member of the Union, there was no good reason why he shouldn’t be sitting in that chair twenty years from now senilely sucking on sweet biscuits.

‘Just before you came in,’ he said breaking the biscuit with a sad little snap, ‘I was thinking of my fiancée. She was torpedoed in ‘43, you know.’

The last time I had heard him say that, someone in the group had snarled, ‘Torpedoed in the middle of the Mediterranean like?’ and he had looked puzzled while everyone laughed.

‘As a writer,’ he said, ‘I live in my memories.’

‘The last time I saw you,’ I said, ‘I was ill.’

‘It’s wretchedly true,’ he said, not listening as usual, ‘that here in Scotland we have this difficulty in finding our voice. I imagine at Oxford or Cambridge every fledgling can strike off an effect because he pulls on the teat of tradition. We, on the other hand, have to invent our manner as well as our matter. The Americans used to be the same – everyone having to begin all over again each time – but I suppose all those PhD theses helped to cure that – very self-conscious people, Americans. Unfortunately, not being English or Americans, for us that’s neither here,’ he broke his biscuit in two, ‘nor there,’ and popped the smaller piece into his mouth.

‘I was ill.’

He blinked slowly and moved his lips like a goldfish surfacing.

‘You look disgustingly healthy.’

‘The last time we met I was ill. I was on the operating table the next day. My system was full of poison.’

‘But now you’re healthy.’

‘I heal fast.’

‘Show me your stitching,’ he said and smiled disquietingly.

‘I wanted to ask you about— a dream I had.’

‘The afternoon’s improving.’ He edged up the collapsing slope of chair; the struggle producing inches of grey underwear over the belt of his trousers. ‘I love dreams – and people so rarely offer them now.’

‘I was walking over the bridge in Gibson Street and I saw a boy being killed.’

‘By a red Jaguar.’

‘No. He was lifted over. He fell on the wooden pier. A man lifted him over.’

‘Can you describe the man?’

‘No. It was a dream. Only . . . it’s stupid – I heard his bones breaking.’

He settled back with a cheated look.

‘I’ve heard more lurid adventures of the unconscious. I’d put it down to a presumptuous little cheese for last night’s supper.’

‘Not last night. I told you – the last time I met you. On the steps outside. It was the night I . . . fell ill.’