The Flood was edited by a fellow literature student called Iain Cameron, and proof-read by one of my lecturers. The painting on the jacket was provided by a student at the nearby art college. (A few years back, when Polygon was moving premises, I tried tracking down the original artwork, but it seemed to have vanished without trace). The handsomely-produced book was eventually published in February 1986, in a joint run of hardcover (three hundred) and paperback (maybe eight hundred). One of my diary entries of the time states: ‘Saw “Flood” (and the other new Polygons) in Stockbridge Bookshop: it looked as though only one copy (of Alan Jamieson’s novel) had been bought. Felt a twinge of failure.’ However, the next day I was doing some tutoring at the university, and two of my students had brought copies of the book that they wanted me to sign. (I hope they’ve held on to them — The Flood has become highly collectable... and very expensive as a result, which explains this new edition I want it to be available to everyone who wants it, without them needing to remortgage their house or pawn the children).
Publication week climaxed with a launch party for all three authors held in one of the university buildings. I was photographed, had to read from the book in public for the first time, and even sold and signed a few copies. Afterwards, a bunch of friends took me to the Café Royal for a night of riotous assembly which ended with us being asked to leave.
I woke up next morning on a living-room floor, with my publication cheque (£300) safe in my pocket. It was a shaking, whey-faced author who posed that afternoon for a photographer from the Dundee Courier.
A trickle of reviews eventually arrived, as did a trickle of sales. By the end of May, I was recording in my diary that I’d sold five hundred copies in total. Meantime, an aunt of mine had finished reading the book and thought me depraved. According to my dad, she was “crying for my soul”. If only she’d been a reviewer, some extra interest might have been drummed up. Eventually, I visited her in the flesh, so she could chastise me properly for writing such sordid stuff — “all soiled knickers and fag-ends”, I believe she said. She also asked how I would feel if my niece were to read the book. Little did she realise that I was already at work on my next project, which, in the fag-end stakes, would make The Flood look like Little Women...
1963–1969
The Falling Time
1
When Mary Miller was ten years old and not yet a witch, and Carsden was still a thriving mining village, she would watch her brother Tom playing football in the park with his friends. She was attracted, young though she was, to their swagger, to the way they rolled their shirtsleeves up like their fathers and shouted for every ball. She would sit by the goalposts between which her brother danced and would console him when he let in a goal.
At that time she had a doll called Missie Lizzie, and she would clutch Missie Lizzie to her tiny chest as if sustaining her. The sun shone low over long summer evenings and the rumble of the pit-head lulled her into near sleep. Smoke drifted over the park while locomotives slipped away over distant rails. There was a rhythm to everything in those days, as if some tune were being played behind a veil beyond which the young girl could not see. The trees beside the hot burn snapped their fingers, and the lapping of the burn itself added the final cadence to the symphony.
One evening Mary was sitting against the iron fence behind Tom’s goalposts, he having gone to the centre of the pitch to share in the half-time refreshments, and was falling asleep as usual with Missie Lizzie lying across her lap. The air was so clear that bird-calls seemed to carry to her ears from way over past the Auld Kirk and even Blackwood’s Farm, and these were the sounds to which she fell asleep. She was a small, skinny thing with long black hair tied back into a ponytail which fell tantalisingly down her back and which, consequently, her brother Tom in one of his moods would often pull. Every hair would cry out as if burning when he did this, and she would run crying to her mother who would tell her father who would scold the bully, perhaps even letting him taste his pit-belt. Then Tom would not speak to her for a day or two, and would give her killing looks. Not today, though; there could be nothing but innocence in the park on such an evening. She could almost feel the warmth of the hot burn behind her, bringing its murky deposits down from the pit-head to be washed into the River Ore and carried out to sea. In the winter, steam rose from the hot burn and people warmed themselves beside it, some even waggling their fingers or bared toes in the dark liquid to revive the feeling in them. Sometimes the burn was red in colour, sometimes black, and occasionally a clearer bluey-grey, but only when the pit was idle.
Mary had been sleeping for only a few minutes when she found herself edging towards wakefulness because of some sounds nearby. There was a rustling and a faint whistling behind her, then muffled sniggers and more rustling. She knew, as she opened her eyes, that something was behind her, creeping through the field across which the hot burn threaded its course, nearing the railings against which she now sat petrified. From her still bleary eyes she could just make out Tom in the centre of the football pitch. He was laughing and biting into a half-orange. He would save a piece for her. The sounds were coming nearer, but she was too afraid to scream. Her mother had told her of the goblins who lived in the hot burn and would eat any young children who wandered close to their home without taking an adult for protection. Tom had laughed and told her that it was all a fairy story to stop her from going too close to the burn and maybe falling in. But perhaps, she now thought, she really had strayed too close to the goblins’ home. Perhaps if she edged away now it would be all right.
Suddenly something growled immediately behind her and an arm, very human in design, snaked through the iron railings and snatched Missie Lizzie from Mary’s lap. She screamed and stood up. The boys were whooping and careering across the field, tossing the doll between them. Mary was horrified. She screamed a high-pitched squeal and squeezed between the iron bars, almost getting stuck but eventually forcing herself through. Tom was shouting at her as she stumbled through the barley, which prickled her legs terribly. She made relentlessly towards the two boys, who seemed quite keen for her to follow. They were older boys, older even than Tom, and she recognised both of them. They grinned at her and waved Missie Lizzie towards her, and she was bawling with the tears threatening to blind her. She held out her arms towards Missie Lizzie as she walked towards her tormentors. When she was too close, the boys darted around her and trotted a little distance away. They waved the doll and laughed and jeered at her, and all the time she could hear Tom’s voice angrily behind her as he tried to climb over the fence.
‘I want it back, I want it back!’ she cried as she reached out her arms. The doll, with its smiling stupid face and its red dress, was hanging high in the air now, was pinned by an adolescent arm against the deepening blue sky below which the hot burn murmured. She stood on tiptoe, ignoring the boy and his outstretched arm, and just touched Missie Lizzie’s foot with her fingertips. The doll was released, and a soft push in Mary’s back was all that was needed to send her toppling into the hot burn, screaming as she hit the water, taking in a choking mouthful of silt and heat and darkness. Her eyes stung as if sand had been thrown into her face. She knew that she should not be here. She gasped, feeling her hand breaking the surface of the water and touching the floating body of her doll. There was a swirling and a rushing and a bubbling of liquid. She had no right to be in this place. This was a warm dying place and dark. Her knees touched the gritty, yielding bottom, her hands in light and air and her body submerged. It was quite pleasant, really, to be away from the teasing boys and their cruelty. She began to give herself to the thick water. Then her hair was screaming, rough things clawing at it. There were goblins in the hot burn and she had disturbed their nest. She opened her eyes, but was blind. Then, hair screaming still, she felt herself rising from the liquid. Her hair was on fire, and suddenly she was in brightness and air and was being sick, spewing up all the silt and the darkness. She was dragged to the bank and her hair stopped screaming. Voices rushed into her ears as the water rushed out. ‘By Christ, Tom, that was close.’ ‘Aye, pulled her out by the pigtail.’ ‘She was down there a while, though.’ ‘Are you all right, Mary?’ ‘I saw them. It was Matty Duncan and Jock McLeod’s boy.’ ‘Is she all right there, Tom? Should we fetch your mum?’