Stonemouth полностью

I stood in the bar, looking out to the dunes, trying to see the sea. Above a line of bushes just in front of the windows, wee white balls sailed into the air and dropped again, as people on the practice greens tried out their chip shots and sand wedges. I was the proud holder of a degree in fine arts and the offer of a job with an interesting-sounding building-lighting company, based in London but very much international. More money than I’d expected to be earning at this stage.

I’d had to concede that my earlier dreams of being a Mackintosh/Warhol/Koons de nos jours might have been a little overambitious. I’d found stuff I especially loved doing and got brilliant grades for, and a lot of it seemed to revolve around the use of light on interior and exterior surfaces. My degree show had been a triumph, a lecturer who was a fan had made some phone calls and people from lighting consultancies had come to have a look. One lot in particular seemed to appreciate what I’d been doing. They took me for dinner and made me the offer that evening. In theory I was still thinking about it but I was going to say yes. I’d talked to Ellie and she was okay with moving to London, once she’d completed the fourth and final year of her inherently complicated course; it’d be a new challenge, a new era, and, besides, there were plenty of flights from City airport to Dyce.

In a little over a week I’d be a married man. It still seemed slightly unreal. Sometimes these days I felt like my own body double — being told to stand here, strike this pose, now walk over here — while the real me, the famous me, sat in his luxury trailer and waited for the call. Other times I felt like I was auditioning for a part in my own lifestory, which would start to take place after these slightly ramshackle, part-improvised rehearsals had been concluded and the producer/director finally pronounced himself happy.

The little white balls rose and fell above the line of bushes in the rosy early-evening light, like especially well-groomed sand hoppers.

That first night by the fire with Ellie seemed a very long time ago.

A group of guys at the bar laughed loudly, as though it was a competition. I hooked a finger into the gap between my neck and my shirt collar, working it a bit looser. I fucking hated ties. I hoped they wouldn’t expect me to wear a tie at work. I was going to wear a clip-on bow tie for the wedding next week. I’d been bought a kilty outfit in the clan tartan by Mum and Dad. The Murstons had been going to set us up in a house locally but were now talking about finding a flat in London for us, assuming I took this job.

I’d already had what had felt like a semi-formal meeting with Don, up at the house.

We were well past the what-are-your-intentions-young-man? stage. I was marrying his eldest daughter, the wedding was pretty much fully organised and everything was arranged. Mrs Murston had taken over almost from the start after our original idea of running off to Bermuda or Venice or somewhere — either just the two of us or with a very few close friends — had been dismissed as Not Good Enough. Ellie had put her foot down just once, regarding the dress. She wanted, and had had a friend design, something simple; Mrs M had wanted something that wouldn’t have been out of place on My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. (Allegedly; I hadn’t been allowed to see the designs for either. Clearly, a few centuries back, some rule-obsessed, OCD nut-job had been allowed to dream up the absurd ‘traditions’ surrounding weddings, and the groom not seeing the dress was one of them.)

At one point during our chat Donald had asked me what I believed in. I was momentarily stumped. Did he mean religion-wise?

We were having a Church of Scotland wedding, though nobody involved seemed to be especially religious. Including the minister — we’d talked. ‘To be perfectly honest, Stewart,’ he’d told me, tented fingers supporting his bearded chin, ‘I see priests and ministers and so on primarily as social workers in fancy dress.’ And him wearing jeans and a jumper.

I think the potential for spectacle offered by the rather grand Abbey on Clyn Road had had a lot to do with the choice of venue, and Mrs M was treating the need for any sort of religious component within the service as being a sort of slightly annoying non-optional theme, like a rather elaborate dress code.

I hadn’t even been sure the Murstons were Prods at all. I’d known that, like most right-thinking people in the region, they were devout Press and Journalists — of course — but their religious affiliations had never seemed germane before.

‘Well, I’m not really religious,’ I’d told Donald. We were sipping single malts, just the two of us, at the well-stocked bar in what he called his rumpus room, part of the extensive cellar area beneath Hill House. ‘I suppose I believe in truth.’

‘Truth?’ Donald said, brows furrowing.