“Ryan, I’m astounded. It’s absolutely beautiful.” He wandered over to the window and stared out at the night, biting his nails as if unable to deal with the compliment. “Why haven’t you word processed your work?”
He turned to face her. “I don’t know anything about computers.”
“See! There are always new things we can learn, aren’t there?” Judith declared with great enthusiasm, causing Ryan to shrug his shoulders diffidently. “I tell you what: I’ll teach you how to get round a computer if you let me read the rest of your book…you’ve got me intrigued.”
Judith winked at Ryan and he couldn’t help but return a lovely, wide smile. It was the first time she’d ever seen him anything other than sullen.
As they re-entered the candlelit kitchen, Danny pulled a chair out from between himself and Angie, so that Ryan could join them for a dram of whisky. “If you’re as well read as you reckon, then there’s no reason why you can’t sit in and help teach. We’re promoting a philosophy of co-operation here. There’s no place for elitists,” he told the youngster.
“But I spend every minute of my day working on the book,” Ryan protested. “When I’m not actually writing I’m thinking about what I’m going to write. It’s a torment, like having an eternal itch. The only way to find relief is to scratch. So I have to keep writing all the time. You should know this as an artist. Did the renaissance masters have time to waste?”
Danny laughed and grabbed Ryan in an affectionate headlock, full of admiration at his passion.
“Two days a week you can help Angie here with her seminars — that gives you five days undisturbed to work on the book. Ok?” He pulled his captives head back, playfully. “Ok?”
“Ok.”
On being released, Ryan struggled to repress only his second smile since they’d known him. He even removed the checked baseball cap — hitherto welded to his head — revealing a sandy crew cut, which made him instantly more amenable. As more whisky flowed the mood became so relaxed that Ryan announced he had a confession to make to Danny. All went silent.
“You know that first meeting you had? Up in the old textiles mill?”
“Aha.”
“There were about twelve of us, right?”
“Yes.”
“There should have been more — a lot more.” Ryan placed his cap back on, holding the peak and rubbing it against his scalp, nervously. “There were a good fifty from all over the city waiting outside in small groups, but our little crew chased them away with potato peelers. If you’d got us to fill the applications in there and then you’d have seen that nine of the thirteen people present where all from my scheme. They only turned up coz I told them to. That’s why there were just three the following week.”
“Why would you want to scare the others away?” Angie interrupted.
“Get rid of the competition of course. I knew places would be scarce and that you’d never pick some volatile loser with a second prize. In my experience most people are out to disadvantage you, so you have to make your own luck.” Unable to look at anyone he stared past Hamish sat opposite and focused on Danny’s mother’s portrait. “I’m sorry…not just for you, but for the people I scared off too.” He let go of his cap and emptied his glass in one. “So, if you want nothing more to do with me, I totally understand.”
Danny stood up and raised his glass of water in a toast: “Everybody! To Ryan! And may all the students in this college be as worthy as him!”
“To Ryan!” the others concurred, chinking their tumblers together.
Ryan looked like he was on the verge of tears and left before betraying any more emotion.
CHAPTER: 12
Except for occasional fallouts, the college was getting along fine. Thanks to passionate teaching and a co-operative ethos — which saw the more able students obliged to coach those lagging behind — astounding advances were made during that first term. Consequently, meal time conversations evolved from idle gossip to full-on intellectual debates, which rarely saw anyone leave the table until midnight. There’d also been something of a revolution in the preparation of the meals themselves, with every resident student and teacher being partnered off to do their stint at the range. Despite a few burnt meals early on, by winter everyone had become a competent chef, except for Danny. In fact, his meals were so abysmal, he got banned from all kitchen duties except washing-up, and even then he left a lot to be desired.
That December, the students went home for a month, leaving Danny, Judith, Angie, Fin and Ryan, who’d been invited to stay in Hamish’s room rather than be all alone. While enjoying Christmas dinner together, they were interrupted by someone knocking at the door. It was just after three o’clock. The Highland dusk had already fallen, so that when Judith answered she could only make out a man’s silhouette. Being the season of goodwill to all men though, she brought the stranger into the candlelit kitchen where it took a moment before she recognized Dickens without his glasses. Still wearing his old brown suit, he’d been walking all day from Kinlochewe.
Judith did the utmost to make Dickens welcome, but he threw it back in her face. Taciturn and sullen, he inhibited what had been a merry gathering, rudely smoking his roll ups while everyone was still eating. It was obvious he wanted her exclusive attention, so she took him up to her room where they sat together on the bed.
Just out of prison, Dickens had hitched-hiked from Glasgow to Kinlochewe on Christmas Eve, having acquired the college address from a cell-mate whose daughter was a student. It turned out that he’d been arrested for fare dodging on a London bound train the day after Judith had last spoken to him at Herman’s house. Typing Dickens’s name into their computer, Motherwell Police had discovered he was already on the run, having jumped bail for two assaults, one in Edinburgh and another in Dundee. Not only that, but Bob Fitzgerald had made an allegation against him the previous day, when Dickens had been round to his apartment and dispensed a farewell head-butt. All three assaults had been inflicted upon former acquaintances who Dickens had felt let down by. One was beaten up for asking him to leave their family home, after he’d been sleeping on the couch for two months, another for not inviting him to their wedding. As for Bob Fitzgerald, well, Dickens had elevated the singer to hero status and he’d repaid him with ridicule.
Judith was perturbed to learn that Dickens had been harbouring a dream of him and her being a couple. Indeed, to him it was destiny. He kept banging on about “us” and “we” as if their future together was ineluctable and it had only been prison bars keeping them apart. She was paying the price now for her affectionate farewell eighteen months earlier, when she’d said she loved him, in that way women do with men whom they have no physical attraction to whatsoever. She tried subtly to disabuse him of this fantasy, all the time fearing that she might become another victim of his violence.
“Dickens, I don’t want a relationship with anybody, Ok.
Dickens sprang up from the bed and banged his palm violently against the wardrobe.
“Dickens, please, calm down,” Judith implored.
“I am calm!”
“You’ve got to stop demanding so much of people.”