Constitutional

In theory, the New Hall Christmas party was a really decent night out. Like good empiricists, we laboured to revise that theory to meet the available facts; namely that it was a decent night out for people who weren’t us.  In the first year, Frank and Mart drank four bottles of white wine between them before setting off and respectively puked on the bus, and sat in puke on the bus – and not as unrelated incidents, I might add. In the second year, I made my final catastrophic attempt to romance Ella, and then risked death to forget it. I also trod in deer shit, which was really not on the radar at the start of the evening.

The party was annually hosted at a bona fide, genuine nightclub called Enigma, although the real mystery was why anyone would want to spend a night in the scary part of Dundee. [Which is all of it.] After the buses pulled up, a bunch of wasted local kids hurled abuse at us and, later, chips. Graffiti on the dirty bricks of the nightclub itself depicted a sex act that, despite close to two decades of unfettered internet access, I have still never seen reproduced in porn.

That night I was wearing a flamboyant and ill-chosen shirt, the entire merits of which consisted in its being of, at least in part, a festive colour. I was also wearing a ‘Jingle Bells’ musical tie, which must have been the result of a gentlemanly wager of some sort because even at that point in my life I wouldn’t have stooped so close to a total suicide of dignity. It had a little Santa with flashing red LED eyes.

I don’t know why I was asking Ella out again. I wish I could remember, because it seemed mostly reasonable at the time. It was all undone in the execution, of course: I’d come to the conclusion that if it wasn’t going to happen with the aid of mistletoe, then it wasn’t going to happen at all. With hindsight applied, the cautious application of Occam’s Razor might have saved me some time, as well as the fifty pence I spent on a plastic sprig of New Hall committee’s party-approved mistletoe substitute.

The club was dark, but bright with it. Neon nights glared into the smoky air. Could have been dry ice, probably it was just cigarettes. It was all gaudy and cyberpunk, and I guess it felt like somewhere you could have a good time.

‘I’ve got a tattoo!’ Ella said, when I sat next to her.

‘I’ve got a scar under my eye,’ I said.

‘That’s not the same.’ 

‘I guess not.’

‘Do you want to see it?’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Did it hurt?’

She leaned forwards, and brushed her long hair to one side. Her low back dress showed it off, a tiny thing on her left shoulder blade.

‘A bit. I got it done with my friend, in Glasgow. She had an ankle one. That was really sore.’

‘Why the butterfly?’

‘I just liked it. It was in the book.’

‘Huh,’ I said.

‘What’s up? You look sick.’

‘I was going to ask...’ I said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Uh, I have this mistletoe,’ I said, words falling out of me. ‘If I hold it above your head, would you kiss me?’

‘No,’ she said, firmly.

She held up a hand. It called her No, and raised it an additional Stop Right There.

‘Huh,’ I said, again.

I was mostly surprised. I really don’t know what I expected. It just seemed kind of unsporting to say no to mistletoe. I pushed the cheap sprig into her hand, and stared up at the ceiling, as if for inspiration. There was no mistletoe up there amongst flashing lights and ventilation pipes.

‘Well that’s going to be embarrassing in the morning.’

She nodded.

‘I won’t ask you again,’ I said.

‘OK.’

‘Look,’ I said. ‘This is the only time you’ve never had anything to say to me. I don’t want to make it like this. Honestly.’

She got up. Hovered awkwardly for a second. I looked at the floor, shook my head. When I finished my bottle I went to the bar. Mart was there.

‘Buy me a beer,’ I told him. ‘It has not been a good day for the Empire.’

He did. He’s a generous sort when he’s pissed. I bought him one back, and then a couple more to tide us over.

‘Double-fisting,’ Mart said, with a grin. ‘The gentleman’s alternative to sexual success.’

‘You saw that, then?’ I asked him.

‘Saw what?’

I raised a bottle, and clinked it with one of his.

‘I’m going to drink till I can see the funny side of that.’

My next memory, which could be from hours later, is of sitting at a little round coffee table full of empty bottles, by myself, on a stain-cushioned horseshoe bench. Almost by myself: Sandy Bertrando was sitting five feet away, looking like I felt and for some reason that I will never know, cradling my musical tie to his ear and repeatedly tormenting himself with its festive banshee death wail. [a.k.a. Season’s Greeting.] I watched with a kind of distracted fascination. Santa’s demon eyes glared back at me.

Looking back over to the bar, I saw Ella getting chatted up by one of our local sports stars. He was leaning in. She was responding well. I felt a bitter, helpless surge of jealousy. He put his hand on her shoulder, she touched her mouth. I kicked the coffee table, hard, and it overturned, scattering bottles and beer dregs over the sticky carpet. It was time to leave.

When I got outside, there were no buses waiting. A bunch of students were milling at the local kebab shop. I walked past them. There would be other buses.

I walked downhill a few blocks, until I reached the bank of the Tay. There was a huge, old fashioned boat moored up: Discovery. I didn’t know which way I was going at that point, but straight on looked wet and I wasn’t going back.

I tried to follow the water towards the bridge because I figured that as long as I was always walking towards it then I couldn’t help but get there eventually. I guess the same thought applied to Fife Park in a wider sense. I didn’t know how I was getting back at that point. There was no plan. There was just the anti-plan that was putting distance between myself and that fucking club.

I couldn’t follow the water. There were obstacles in my path. There were fences, buildings, passes, flights of stairs, shopping centres which were closed past eight in the evening. I remember walking down a long dark corridor which was most decidedly indoors in some manner that I don’t quite understand. I remember shimmying along a thin pipe. Eventually I got to the Tay Bridge.

There was a manned tollbooth back then. Cars were passing on either side. I walked up to the booth, and asked if there was some way to cross on foot. There was, in the form of a small service path running between the lanes of traffic with safety barriers on either side. I patiently waited at the booth as an old geezer was hailed on some kind of two way radio. A few moments later, I saw him huffing out of a terminal over the road.

The barrier had to be opened with a key. I remember vaguely hoping that this wouldn’t be an issue once I reached the other side of the bridge. The guy unlocking the gate challenged me, half-heartedly.

‘I live on the other side of it,’ I told him. ‘And I want to go home.’

I don’t know why he opened the gate and let me cross, but he did. Maybe there’s some legal right of way – even if you’re a man in just his shirt sleeves in the middle of December, pissed out of his mind, ranting, stumbling, and barely able to speak. Also, I guess it’s always possible they thought I was a local.

As I walked out onto the bridge – in  fact, at the very moment that the gate closed behind me – I felt a rush of cold wind as the first returning bus passed me. It was full of drunk students. It looked like the party was still going on inside, glowing with energy, and pressing a warm, yellow luminance into the darkness. It was very fucking cold when that bus was out of sight. I finally realised, in the light of new and overwhelming evidence, that I was not going to get home before my fellow partygoers. After the bus, there was no more traffic on the bridge for minutes on end. It was just me, stumbling along, bouncing off the rails on either side of me, and never seeming to get any closer to the other side, partly because it is a fucking long bridge and one bit of it looks pretty much like another, and partly because I was walking sideways as often as forwards.

Periodically there were signs above my head with the number of the Bridge Services Department emblazoned across them. I wanted to turn back, but felt that I must be closer to the other side. I don’t know at what point that stopped being wishful thinking. It never occurred to me then that crossing the bridge would be the shortest part of the journey.

I cannot stress enough how fucking freezing I was. It was not a thick shirt that I was wearing and as it turns out, warm colours aren’t, particularly. I didn’t even have my tie. Sandy was probably still cradling it, on the bus, halfway back to St. Andrews. All the way back maybe. He could have been asleep by then.

It wasn’t much warmer when I finally reached the other side, but there was less wind. There was, thankfully, no gate at the other end. There would have been no one to open it. I had to crawl up a gigantic sloped embankment to find the road again. I muddied my jeans falling on my knees. I muddied my hands picking myself back up. I was determined. I walked across the middle of a large roundabout.

It was already too late to really be a decision by then, but that was when I decided, in a fool state, that I would get Ella out of my system once and for all by walking back, and thinking things over. There was all the time in the world. I’m sure I did my share of thinking, but I don’t remember a whit of it. I do remember gritting my teeth to stop them banging off each other.

I walked along embankments where the road had embankments. Sometimes they were muddy, and sometimes they were hard to walk on because of hidden stones or thick tufts of grass. Often I walked straight down the middle of the road. I tried to stay between the lanes. Sometimes I walked down the middle of those, too. I kept my ears pricked up for traffic, but there was precious little of it. I was more afraid than comforted when it passed. I felt safer alone, but then I was afraid of the dark. Quite afraid, I remember. There were sometimes animal noises, lowing and barking, the sound of the countryside, which made me feel as  small as the dark is large. I was in the middle of it, miles and miles into the middle of it, and there was nothing to do but try and get out of it.

The first time I needed a piss, I went off-road. I walked up a little hillside. At the top was a small wooded section. It was extremely foreboding, but once again I refused to turn back. I pissed against a tree with massive satisfaction.

When I turned around,  I heard something else moving.

‘Oh shitting fuck,’ I said.

It heard me, and whatever it was broke into a run. I couldn’t tell if it was coming towards me or running away.

‘Fucking fuck me.’ It was a whimper.

My throat closed up and my heart lurched. But there was nothing to do about it. I was terrified of something in the dark, and unlike in a nightmare it was really there, only I couldn’t see it.

The running noise got quieter. I stood in the same spot until I couldn’t hear anything but rustling leaves. It was probably a deer, because when I came out of the other side of the wood, I trod in shit and I’m almost certain it wasn’t my own. There were several large piles of it, and I reckon I found them all. I swore a lot, and looked at the stars. I carried on walking.

The road never seemed to change, but the night was getting old. Sometimes I half fell asleep, but I was always walking when I opened my eyes. I remember stopping at the roadside, and wondering whether I should lay down. I started to feel cold right into my bones, and my whole body jolted with it, and so I ran until I warmed up. I don’t know how much running I did. I’ve never really been able to run. Next time I had to piss, I just did it in the road. There was no fucker around for miles.

I could just about read the road signs as I reached Leuchars. I took a wrong turn, and I thought that I was walking through the airbase, but it was just chain link fences on either side of me. I hit the right road after the train station, on the way into Guardbridge. I knew those roads, and knew St. Andrews was only seven miles further down them. That made it seem close. The sky grew gradually lighter, and traffic picked up.

The last hour was the longest. The sky went from inky to mild grey down the long road into St. Andrews. I could see the pattern of lights marking the Golf Hotel for near an hour before I reached it. One of my hips hurt. It felt like it was grinding in the socket.

I was sobering up, and starting to see things for what they were. The temptation to try and hail one of the passing cars grew into an urge. But by that time, it was a journey almost done. I had started to feel kind of good about things. I wanted to finish the walk, and be able to say that I had walked it. I didn’t particularly want to say that I had gotten into some shitty red Fiesta on the last leg of the journey.

Eventually I was opposite the Golf Hotel, back in St. Andrews, and suddenly the walk was just a walk from the Golf Hotel to Fife Park, and not an insurmountable goal. I walked down the back path, behind New Hall, and into FifePark. I had a few glasses of water in the kitchen from an unrinsed glass as the sun blazed into my eyes through the window. It was only just a fraction above the horizon and it had turned the ugly walls of the kitchen bright orange. I could feel the warmth of the sun on my chest, and its cool absence on my back. Ella seemed a million miles away, at the end of a tunnel. So did the whole of the night.

‘Is that you Quinine?’ I heard Frank call, as I reached the door to my room.

Frank is the only person who calls me by my full first name, pronouncing it like Kwin-in.

‘Leave me the fuck alone,’ I said. I went to my bed.

The next afternoon, when I woke up, I felt stupid. But also slightly smug. The world felt more like a place I was in than it had the night before. I walked from town to town – a seemingly impossible feat. I had never walked from one large town to another before. I’d never done it by day, let alone by night; never even biked it. Towns and cities have always seemed like separate worlds that can only be reached along thin interconnecting roads, by rocket-fuelled modes of automotive transport. It comforts me, even now, to think that it can still be done. It calms me to know that everywhere is somewhere you can walk, give or take.  It is so comforting to think that if all the world’s fuel ever runs out, I won’t find myself stuck for the rest of my life in, say, Hull.