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'Aw . . . ' I waved my hand. 'Too complicated.'
Ash and I stood on a low little mound overlooking what had been the Slate Mine
wharf, at the north-west limit of Gallanach where the Kilmartin Burn flows out
of the hills, meanders without conviction, then widens to form part of
Gallanach Bay before finally decanting into the deeper waters of Inner Loch
Crinan. Here was where the docks had been, when the settlement had exported
first coal then slate then sand and glass, before the railway arrived and a
subtle Victorian form of gentrification had set in the shape of the railway
pier, the Steam Packet Hotel and the clutch of sea-facing villas (only the
fishing fleet had remained constant, sporadically crowded amongst its inner
harbour in the stony lap of the old town, swelling, dying, burgeoning again,
then falling away once more, shrinking like the holes in its nets).
Ashley had dragged me out here, now in the wee small hours of what had become
a clear night with the stars steady and sharp in the grip of this November
darkness, after the Jacobite Bar and after we'd trooped (victorious at pool,
by the way) back to Lizzie and Droid's flat via McGreedy's
(actually McCreadie's Fast Food Emporium), and after consuming our
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fish/pie/black pudding suppers and after a cup of tea and a J or two, and
after we'd got back to the Watt family home in the
Rowanfield council estate only to discover that Mrs Watt was still up,
watching all-night TV (does
Casey Casen never sit down in that chair?), and made us more tea, and after a
last wee numbrero sombrero in Dean's room.
'I'm going for a walk, guys, okay?' Ash had announced, coming back from the
toilet, cistern flushing somewhere in the background, pulling her coat back
on.
I'd suddenly got paranoid that I had over-stayed my welcome and - in some
dopey, drunken excess of stupidity - missed lots of hints. I looked at my
watch, handed the remains of the J to
Dean. 'Aye, I'd better be off too.'
'I wasn't trying to get rid of you,' Ash said, as she closed the front door
after us. I'd said goodbye to Mrs Watt; Ash had said she would be back in
quarter of an hour or so.
'Shit. I thought maybe I was being thick-skinned,' I said as we walked the
short path to a wee garden gate in the low hedge.
'That'll be the day, Prentice,' Ash laughed.
'You really going to walk at this time of night?' I looked up; the night was
clear now, and colder. I pulled on my gloves. My breath was the only cloud.
'Nostalgia,' Ash said, stopping on the pavement. 'Last visit to somewhere I
used to go a lot when I was a wean.'
'Wow, really? How far is it? Can I come?' I have a fascination with places
people think powerful or important. If I hadn't been still fairly drunk I'd
have been a lot more subtle about asking to accompany Ash, but, well, there
you are.
Happily, she just laughed quietly, turned on her heel and said, 'Aye; come on;
isn't far.'
So here we stood, on the wee mound only five minutes from the Watt house, down
Bruce Street, through a snicket, across the Oban road and over the weedy waste
ground where the dock buildings stood, long ago.
The dock-side was maybe ten metres away; the skeletal remains of a crane stood
lop-sided a little way along the cancered tarmac, its foundations betrayed by
rotten wooden piling splaying out from the side of the wharf like broken black
bones. Mud glistened in the moonlight. The sea was a taste, and a distant
glittering that all but disappeared if you looked at it straight. Ash seemed
lost in thought, staring away to the west. I shivered, un-studded the wide
lapels of the fake biker's jacket and pulled the zip up to my right shoulder
so that my chin was encased.
'Mind if I ask what we're doing here?' I asked. Behind and to our left, the
lights of
Gallanach were steady orange, like all British towns, forever warning the
inhabitants to proceed with caution.
Ash sighed, her head dropped a little. She nodded down, at the ground we stood
upon. 'Thought you might know what this is, Prentice.'
I looked down. 'It's a wee lump of ground,' I said. Ash looked at me. 'All
right,' I said, making a flapping action with my elbows (I'd have spread my
hands out wide, but I wanted to keep them in my pockets, even with my gloves
on). 'I don't know. What is it?'
Ash bent down, and I saw one pale hand at first stroke the grass, and then dig
down, delving into the soil itself. She squatted like that for a moment, then
pulled her hand free, rose, brushing earth from her long white fingers.
This is the Ballast-Mound, the World-Hill, Prentice,' she said, and I could
just make out her
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thin smile by the light of the gibbous moon. 'When the ships came here, from
all over the world, for whatever it was they were shipping from here at the
time, they would sometimes arrive unladen, just ballast in them; you know?'
She looked at me. I nodded. 'Ballast; yeah, I know what ballast is; stops
ships doing a Herald of Free Enterprise.'
'Just rocks, picked up from wherever the ship last set sail from,' Ash said,
looking to the west again. 'But when it got here they didn't need it, so they
dumped it - '
'Here?' I breathed, looking at the modest mound with new respect. 'Always
here?'
'That's what my grampa told me, when I was a bairn,' Ash said. 'He used to
work in the docks.
Rolling barrels, catching slings, loading sacks and crates in the holds; drove
a crane, later.'
(Ashley pronounced the word 'cran', in the appropriate Clyde-side manner.) I
stood amazed; I
wasn't supposed to be getting ashamed at my lack of historical knowledge until
Monday, back at
Uni.
'"Hen," he'd say, "There's aw ra wurld unner yon tarp a grass."'
I watched from one side as Ashley smiled, remembering. 'I never forgot that; [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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