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She got her you'll get yours in a minute Jimmy if ye don't shut
She got her degree is it me, eh? Is it? Does ma voice no carry or something?
She
-
yeah, she got her degree; we know. Well on you go, bash on; be my guest.
Christ some people are just so fucking im
She got her degree and letters after her name; he made gentle fun of her new
qualification, and found other symbols to describe her. He had given up the
room in Sciennes Road and was renting a small flat in
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Canonmills. Andrea more or less moved in, though she kept on the flat in
Comely Bank. A cousin of hers from Inverness, called Shona, stayed there while
she went to the PE college in Cramond, the place where
Andrea's family had originated.
He still had to work in his vacations, and she still spent hers abroad with
family and friends, which made him both jealous and envious, but each time
they met again it was as it had been before, and at some point
- he could never pin down just when - he started to think of their
relationship as being something that might last longer than just the next
term. He even thought of suggesting they get married, but a sort of pride in
him would not tolerate the idea of the state - far less the church - being
appeased in this way.
What mattered lay in their hearts (or rather in their brains), not in any
register. Besides, he admitted to himself, she would probably have said No.
They were ex-hippies now, he supposed; if they'd every really been hippies in
the first place. Flower power had ... well, people chose their own phrases;
withered, gone to seed, blossomed and died - he once suggested the problem was
petal fatigue.
She'd worked hard for a good degree, and after graduation took a year off,
while he finished his own studies. She went on short holidays to visit people
in other parts of Scotland and England, and in Paris, and on longer trips to
the States, the rest of Europe, and the Soviet Union. She renewed acquaintance
with her Edinburgh friends, would cook for him while he studied, visit her
mother, sometimes play golf with her father - who, to his amazement, he found
he could talk to quite easily - and read novels in French.
When she came back from the SU it was with a determination to learn Russian.
He would arrive back at the flat sometimes to find her poring over novels and
textbooks filled with the odd-looking half-familiar
Cyrillic alphabet, brows creased, pencil poised over a notebook. She would
look up, gaze incredulously at her watch and apologise for not having cooked
him something; he'd tell her not to be daft, and do the cooking himself.
He missed his own graduation day, lying in the Royal Infirmary recovering from
an appendectomy. His mother and father went to the ceremony anyway, just to
hear his name read out. Andrea looked after them; they all got on fine. Even
when the parents met he was amazed that they all seemed to chat like old
friends; he was ashamed of himself for ever being ashamed of his own mother
and father.
Stewart Mackie met Shona, the cousin from Inverness; they got married during
Stewart's first post-grad year. He was Stewart's best man, Andrea was Shona's
maid of honour. They both made speeches at the reception; his was the better
planned, but hers was the best delivered. He sat watching as she stood
speaking, and realised then how much he loved her and admired her. He also
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felt vaguely proud of her, though he felt that was wrong. She sat down to
enthusiastic applause. He raised his glass to her. She winked back.
A few weeks later she told him she was thinking of going to Paris to study
Russian. He thought she was joking at first. He was still looking for a job.
He had vague ideas of going with her - perhaps he could do a
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in French and look for a job over there - then he was offered a good position
in a firm working on power station design; he had to take it. Three years, she
told him. It'll only be three years.
Only
? he said. She tried to tempt him with the idea of holidays in Paris with her,
but he found it difficult to be supportive.
He was anyway powerless, and she determined.
He wasn't going to see her to the airport. They went out instead, on the
evening before she left, across the road bridge and into Fife, along the shore
to a small restaurant in Culross. They took his car; he had bought a small new
BMW on credit, on the strength of his new-found wealth as an employed man. It
was an awkward meal and he drank too much wine; she was staying sober for the
flight the following day -
she loved flying, she would always have a window seat - so she drove back. He
fell asleep in the car.
When he woke up he assumed they were back outside the flat in Canonmills, or
her old place at Comely
Bank; but lights shimmered far away, across a mile of dark water in front of
them. Before she switched off the headlights he caught a glimpse of something
vast towering over them, at once massive and airy.
'Where the hell's this? he said, rubbing his eyes and looking around. She got
out of the car.
'North Queensferry. Come and see the bridge,' she told him, puliing on her
jacket. He looked out sceptically; the night was cold and there was a hint of
rain. 'Come on,' she called. 'It'll clear your head.'
'So would a fucking revolver,' he muttered as he got out of the car.
They walked past notices warning people about objects falling from the bridge,
and others which claimed the land beyond as private, until they came to a
gravel turning circle, some old buildings, a small slip, grass and
whin-covered rocks, and the round granite piers of the railway bridge itself.
The smir of rain inside the cold wind made him shiver. He looked up into the
wind-moaning spaces of the structure above.
The waters of the Firth of Forth shushed and slapped on nearby rocks, and the
lights of buoys flashed slowly on and off, up and down the wide, dark river.
She held his hand. Upstream, the road bridge was a tall web of light, and a
distant grumble of background noise.
'I like this place,' she told him, and she hugged him, her body quivering with
the cold. He held her, but looked up into the web of steel overhead, lost in
its dark strength.
Three years, he thought. Three years in another city.
'The Tallahatchie Bridge fell down,' he said eventually, more to the cold wind
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