A Life in Comics 4
THE MANSION, once the home of the local laird, looks out over the Cromarty Firth, twenty miles or so north of Inverness. A dank, gated tunnel leads up from the winding road out of the village by which in earlier days workers could reach the servants’ quarters without disturbing the peace of the gentry.
Across the road is an ancient cemetery. A grave lies just outside its entrance, the resting place of a parishioner who had been engaged in a longstanding and bitter dispute with a fellow resident, and asked to be buried outside so that when the Lord came calling he could get his side of the story in first.
A single bus runs from the village to Inverness in the morning (except on Sunday) and returns in the late afternoon. Miss it and you’re forced to spend the night in Inverness, or hitchhike.
My living space, the former servants’ quarters, is in the basement. There are two unheated bedrooms and a kitchen/living room warmed by a woodfired Rayburn stove. The only electricity socket in the three rooms can be found here. It is cold comfort, but I am young and to be honest I had lived in much less acceptable accommodation in Dundee.
There are of course advantages – 25 acres to myself, wonderful views, especially from the high promontory a mile above the house, one of two headlands either side of the firth known as ‘The Sutors’, from which you can gaze out over a vast stretch of the North Sea.
I fail to take adequate precautions to familiarise Bobo with his new home and he disappears. It’s a huge relief when he returns a couple of hours later seemingly extremely pleased with his new circumstances, even with the presence of Alan’s cat Karnak, who has been left with me to look after.
For my own part I sit among my belongings wondering what I have done. Here I am, hundreds of miles from the life I have known with no job and no income, for the arrangement with the owner does not include a salary. I have a place to live in very scenic surroundings and for that I am expected to keep the lawns mown and marauders from the house and grounds.
How do I expect to live with no money coming in? I had assured the owner untruthfully that I would take up a freelance career again, but I have no desire and indeed zero intention to do so. I have some small reserves of money but how long will that last?
Ah, well, like I said I’m young, I’ll get by. Live for the moment and the future will take care of itself.
I’m just settling in, starting to unpack – some days later I might add – when I make the acquaintance of a local poacher and reputed ne’er-do-well by name of Gerry. He shouldn’t be wandering the estate but he seems to know Alan well so I take it he’s in the habit of passing by. He seems a decent enough fellow and it strikes me that it would be useful to know someone well-versed in the locality, especially someone who is able to provide a rabbit or two for the pot, as the grounds are overrun with them.
On a subsequent visit Gerry leaves me his shotgun (unlicenced of course), suggesting that I bag a rabbit for myself. I have never fired a gun — I tell a lie, I did once at age four have a rudimentary air rifle, a ‘popgun’, but had it confiscated after dropping a pin in and shooting my grandmother, newly arrived from Scotland, in the backside. Hi, Granma! Welcome to America!
I got a good thrashing for that, one of many. My mother had a very punitive attitude to childcare, engendered by her own unhappy childhood. It was the main reason she had married my father, an American soldier stationed at Greenock, to get away from her family. Hardly a good basis for a relationship, as it duly turned out.
Gerry’s shotgun is a decrepit old thing held together with wire. It’s surprising that it works at all. Somewhat dubious, in due course I decide to give it a try, creeping up on a rabbit and letting rip. My shot is less than accurate and the poor creature is writhing on the ground, screaming. Distressed, looking for a way to put it out of its misery, I can think of nothing better than to hit it with the shotgun. This succeeds, but also succeeds in breaking the gun in half.
I have learned my lesson and resolve in future to leave all gunplay to the expert.
In fact, the real experts at rabbiting are the cats, principally Karnak, who is a skilled hunter. Bobo soon hits on the simple method of waiting for him to bring one home and stealing it. It’s only after several months at the house that I chance to look in one of the open cellars outside my quarters. It’s a ghastly sight, the floor littered with scores of rotting rabbit carcases, or the remains of them. Though I have been buying the cats raw liver from the butcher’s van that calls in the village twice a week, it’s clear that they could just as easily feed themselves.
* * *
Some snapshots of Cromarty: I walk down through a stretch of wood into the village. Bobo is sitting on a high wall beside the path with a female friend. They seem quite content together. We exchange hellos. Bobo has done a much better job of integrating himself into the local community. I never get to know most of the locals at all well. To them I will always be an outsider, a suspicious character.
I have no television, only a compact stereo system, and this is the year that David Bowie releases ‘The Laughing Gnome’. The radio stations play it incessantly. “Ha ha ha, hee hee hee, I’m the Laughing Gnome and you can’t catch me!” By the time it fades from the airwaves I could happily strangle him. I know many good friends love Bowie but I have never been able to forgive him for that song, and it colours my enjoyment of his entire output.
Some time in the distant past snowdrops were planted on the hillside behind the house. Over the years they have spread, so that in spring the hill is awash with their bobbing white heads. The former owner used to have them cut to be sold in Inverness, and his workers still come up, but there are too many now for them to make much of a dent. Similarly, when the snowdrops are gone, in a rough field beside the house a veritable host of tulips appears, a cheerful blaze of red, white, orange and yellow. I’ll see your golden daffodils, Mr Wordsworth, and raise you my kaleidoscope of tulips.
Alan Grant comes for a visit. I had purchased an inflatable rubber dinghy before leaving London and we decide to take it out on the firth. Not long in the water we realise that we’ve been caught in a current and are being carried at pace out toward the North Sea. The dinghy will not stand up to the open sea. Absolute panic and no little cursing. Picture the sight, future 2000AD writing team scared shitless and paddling for dear life with flimsy plastic paddles. We make it back to shore, but it is a close thing.
I’m out with Gerry hunting woodpigeons when we spot across a misty field a gathering of brown hares, 20 or more of them arrayed in a wide, almost perfect circle. It is a magical sight. This strange ritual is called a ‘parliament of hares’. Its purpose is unknown and many think it a myth, but I can attest that it is no myth.
* * *
In time my money reserves start to run out. I’m living largely on rabbit stew, with a few vegetables purloined from a local farmer’s field. I strongly dislike the taste of rabbit, even more so skinning and gutting them, but needs must.
Gerry has a gill net and we string it out at low tide into the firth. We catch a cod or two, but have to remove it after a friendly warning from the local policeman, as the salmon are running and to catch one even unintentionally would be illegal.
Across the firth at Nigg they’re building a giant oil rig for the North Sea fields. The water there, however, lacks the depth to float the rig out, so a dredger is being employed to excavate a channel. Gerry comes to me with the news that the Dutch-run barge that carries the silt out of the firth is looking for crew. We apply through the Dutch agent, and are taken on.
The barge is called Red Nab. Gerry and I are on the pier watching as she comes speeding in to pick us up – rather too fast, it seems. Indeed, though the barge slows and turns desperately it still succeeds in crashing into the pier. An interesting start.
We work twelve-hour shifts, altering week about on day/night shift. There are two Dutch crew on our shift, Skipper Simon and engineer Nick. Gerry and I act as deck hands, and a third local, Robert, assists Nick in the engine room.
The work is not particularly onerous and often very enjoyable. Red Nab ties up alongside the dredger while it fills the holds with silt. Then, sitting frighteningly low in the water, we make our way out of the firth into the North Sea. At the dumping point doors on the hull of the barge are hydraulically raised so that wedges securing them can be extracted, allowing the doors to swing open and the silt to drop. Then secure the doors again and back to the dredger. On a bright day or balmy night there’s not much better than a pleasant sail. Now and then we have the pleasure of a pod of porpoises for company, leaping alongside us. The occasional seal pops its head up to watch us go by.
The contract on the boat lasts thirteen weeks. Though the work was good the pay was not substantial, and I’m soon looking for employment again. I find a spot at a factory in Invergordon coating pipes with wire and concrete for the North Sea fields. I do not get on with the foreman and stay a mere four days. A second job as a labourer on a new housing project lasts half that time. The pay is poor and the work is grinding. I have nothing against hard work, but something inside me baulks at doing it for someone else’s benefit.
Compared to the latest two ventures the life of a freelance comic writer begins to look rather tempting. I know that I can earn in a day or two what would take me a week working on a building site. The thought of returning to the old life is not altogether pleasing, but in the end I gird my loins and give a few editors a call.
I’m back in the game, and though I don’t realise it then, I will never again escape comics’ clammy clutch. (Apologies, couldn’t resist the alliteration.)
I have little memory of the stories I turn out during the remainder of my time at the mansion, but I still have my old workbook to remind me. It records a couple of episodes of ‘Jeannie and Her Uncle Meanie’ and several parts of a new story that I had totally forgotten I’d written, ‘Dumbell’s Academy’, both for Tammy, plus a host of shorter funnies for the IPC juveniles. The page rate at the time appears to be about £6, no fortune but better than the alternative.
Some time after I resume my freelance work I go up to the attic of the mansion and make a startling discovery. Where before the roof was clad in lead sheet now there is only bare board. It takes me a while to process this. I wrack my brains – had it been like this anyway? No, no, of course not, there had to be lead. Deeply disturbed by this development I report it to the owner and to the police.
‘George the bobby’, our local policeman, seems intent on attributing the disappearance to me, and clearly I am the obvious suspect. Though I do feel some measure of guilt, as the theft happened on my watch, I point out that I had worked several weeks on nightshift on the barge and the whole village would have been very well aware of the fact, so there had been plenty of opportunity for bad actors to make off with the lead, which would fetch a very good price from a scrap merchant.
George wants to take a statement there and then but natural caution warns me not to let a policeman intent on nailing me construct my defence. I tell him I’ll type one out and drop it in the next day. He seems miffed.
I have a few ideas which particular miscreants in the village may have done the deed, but of course there’s no proof, and the lead would long ago have gone to the smelter.
To the best of my knowledge no one is ever convicted of the crime but it brings my tenure at the mansion to an end, and on a very sour note. I can hardly stay on even if the owner wants me, and quite sensibly he doesn’t.
Leaving the cats with a friend – I don’t believe they could ever adapt to life in town again – I pack up my few belongings and return to Dundee. Full circle. The city at least has the benefit of being somewhere I know, with a few acquaintances around, though I no longer feel really at home there.
I have my freelance work, so I’m able to support myself, but I’m far from happy. I am, in truth, rather lost. What to do? What next? Where will life take me now?
And then, not that long into my time back in Dundee, there is a knock on the door. It’s a postman, with a telegram.
It’s from London, from IPC Magazines’ comics division. “Come back. Stop. All is forgiven. Stop. We miss you.”
Or words to that effect.