I trimmed my beard and cut my hair. I stopped and thought for a minute, then found an old canvas bag and stuffed a few spare clothes into it. Taking the shooting stick/umbrella seemed like a good idea, too; I'd carry that. A bottle of blue Stolichnaya nestled into the clothes in the canvas bag, looking quite at home. Emergency rations.
I took a last look round the old place, feeling happy and sad and full of hope and dread all at once, then left by the Holland Street door and put the key back through the letterbox. It was a fresh, cold, dark morning and I walked quickly to Queen Street to catch the train.
The train left on time, its diesel loco chugging into the tunnel heading north out of Queen Street. We moved through the dark city, past housing schemes and old factories and stagnant canals to the suburbs, curving west towards the north bank of the river, which we neared after the city dropped behind. I saw the lights of the Erskine Bridge, near where I'd stood hitching in the rain, two days earlier. The lights of cars moved on the motorway on the Clyde's far bank.
The carriages were old; the train used steam heating, and the smell of it, damply warm and enveloping, filled me with an odd mixture of longing and contentment.
Between Dumbarton and Helensburgh, with the lights of Greenock glittering on the far side of the river, I looked back and saw the first hint of dawn in the clear skies over Glasgow.
The train climbed into the hills; Loch Long was dark, its mountains tree-lined. Navigation lights winked as the young day went from grey to steely-blue. We crossed over to the shores of Loch Lomond between Arrocher and Tarbet. The train laboured out of Arrochar and Tarbet station, percussive voice echoing in the hills, and we rumbled past the hotel I'd stayed in the night before. It was this train, twenty-four hours earlier, that had woken me.
The loch was blue, smooth, quiet under the line of mountains.
I passed a while singing 'Girl On A Train', and humming 'Chattanooga Choo-Choo' and 'Sentimental Journey', trying to remember the words.
Rannoch Moor was a desert of snow. The train startled a herd of forty or more deer, brown-black shapes leaping and running across the white. I went to the buffet, where the smell of steam was even stronger, and ate a bacon sandwich and drank a can of beer. Back at my seat I nibbled at a chocolate biscuit and watched as frozen Loch Trieg appeared way below us; the train slowly descended the mountainside to meet it. The sky was clouding over.
Ben Nevis stood lumplike, still mostly visible, over Fort William. I got out while the train waited in the town's station, ate a pie in the station buffet and bought a newspaper.
The train set out again, heading out the way it had come in, before swinging left for Mallaig. It crossed the Caledonian canal, then swept and wound its way along lochsides and through the hills and the tunnels and over viaducts and bridges, until — suddenly — there was a sea loch, shores matted with weed, waters diced and parcelled with the floating structures of a fish farm.
The line wiggled and twisted through a neck of land, then, in the midst of tumbled rock and tall, crowding trees set in dark flowerless masses of rhododendron bushes, the sea appeared, its horizon bordered by far masses of cliffs and mountains. I felt ashamed that I couldn't tell whether I was looking at islands in the distance, or parts of the mainland.
Then Arisaig at last, under high grey clouds and a fresh north wind. I'd been humming the new song to myself for parts of the journey, but now it suddenly changed and I found myself humming 'Cry About You':
Superstition. Rabbits' feet, blue blankets; a rosary. Something to hold onto and make you feel you weren't completely alone after all. So my song was my comfort and my heart was knocking at the door of my ribs like it wanted to get out, and I found a phonebox in the village and rang Glen Webb's office in Glasgow to get his sister's address, only to find he wasn't in that day and they didn't know where to get in touch with him.
I went to the nearest hotel and sat in the public bar, wondering what to do next. I asked the barman if he knew Jean Webb, but he didn't. This was a small village and I found it ominous. What if Glen Webb had got the name wrong? Why hadn't I waited, done some checking, for God's sake?
According to the timetable I'd picked up in Glasgow, there was a train — the same one, turned round, I guessed — leaving Mallaig at twenty-past twelve. It'd be here eighteen minutes later... but it would only take me as far as Fort William. Shit.
I ought to get on it anyway. This wasn't working out. I was a crazy man. I shouldn't be here; I'd done an insane thing and given everything I ever owned away, and I should get the hell down to London now and tell Tumber I was going to make another album and could I have lots of money immediately?
But maybe it was just fear. I knew I wanted to see her. Even if it was only for an hour, just a few minutes, I had to see her, just to say... oh God, what? I nearly asked you to come away with me a dozen years ago? I'm a lunatic who at the moment is totally penniless apart from what I've got in my pockets and some plastic money I can't afford to use and don't qualify for any more, so please let me stay with you, I'm very good with children, honest?
Insane, insane, insane. And how likely was it she was... unattached? Just her and an eight year old who'd probably take one look at me and run screaming. It didn't seem likely. She must have come here for a reason; some huge, quiet, kind Highland man with a soft voice and hard hands... Jesus, I could almost see him now...
But I still wanted to see her. I'd come here; I couldn't just turn back. Besides, she might hear I was here, after all; they can't get many six-six monsters stopping off in Arisaig in the middle of winter. And how would she feel if she knew I'd been here and not come to see her, if Glen was right about her being pleased to see me? But I knew it wasn't going to work; you just can't do things like this and get away with it. So why not leave now, with the dream at least still intact, so that you'll never know whether it might just have worked? Wouldn't that be salvaging something? Isn't that where the smart money would go? God, impossible to know what to do. I reached into the coat pocket where my change was. My fingers closed round a coin.
I thought, If it's heads, I'll stay here and look for her. If it's tails, I'll get up now and go to the station. Train to Fort William then train tomorrow — or even taxi if they'll take me that far — to Glasgow; London and Rick before teatime.
Heads I stay, tails I go.
I brought the coin out; it was a fifty pence piece. And it was tails.
I put it back in my pocket, in with the rest of the change. I finished my drink and took up my bag and took the glass back to the bar.
One thing about not knowing what to do, and tossing a coin to decide, having made up your mind you'll definitely do whatever the coin says: it sure as hell lets you know what you really want to do, if it says the wrong thing.
I left the bag with the barman, booked a room for the night and I went to the local post office, to ask where Jean Webb lived.
'Och aye; Mrs Keiller, aye, she said her maiden name was Webb.' The old lady in the post office seemed to be quite used to having hulking, brutish strangers ask after local women. 'She has the one wee lassie, that's right.'