Free Strip the Willow by John Aberdein Page B

Jim, Shem, Hamish, Hamlet, what can it possibly matter? No, it wasn’t his name but who he really was that I was after. That was the core of my project, long after the cheques from the NHS were gone. There was even that other quest he’d fondly flirt with: Who he could have been, given luck and a fair wind. We can all indulge ourselves in that sort of thing. But it can also throw some interesting beams. Well, I had to be frank with Iris. My typescript was as good as finished. No, I said, your information has come too late, get your tank off my lawn. Not the way you want to speak to a recently-freed anarchist, let me tell you. I said to her, I’ve done the best I can, it would weary me past conscience to reorder all my stuff.
    You might ask what it is, this best that I’ve done. Well, I’ve done the basics. I’ve turned all first person into third, in order to turn Jim into someone more distanced. No-one wants to hear I, I, I, hammering on. I’ve moved some recordings around to where I think they belong in the original chronological sequence. Nobody’s that keen on reading jumble. And I’ve edited out most of the repetition, I hope. Because sometimes Jim moved via trance to a strange kind of incantation. A dream to listen to, but if you ever try setting incantation down, a thorough bore to read.
    That’s about it really. I’ve added interior decoration, a few descriptions of the city from my own knowledge, and some sketchy topography so you can keep a hold of the journeys. But it’s the feeling that’s most important, and that’s what was there on the tape. What it felt like to be this man. If you don’t sense that, then it is my fault: he blew me plenty, I shaped too much. Does it in any way touch on the novel? Perhaps all biography must. This I attest above all: I fleshed out scenes only where that seemed vital, and in ways I thought consistent and reasonable.
    Icarus ’68 opens at the outset of a year. That may seem daunting. Courage, reader: it is over by the end of the first day. This is one of the swiftest accounts of a fall you will ever meet.
    Let me begin.
     
    In the moment the year started, Jim slipped through the warped door and started
     
    Icarus, thought Lucy. Always keen to get out of the old house.
     
    In the moment the year started, Jim slipped through the warped door and started running through fresh, powdery snow, unfree, yet with the momentum of freedom. He wore a zipped top, blue cotton shorts, and lightweight Japanese road shoes, Tiger Cubs. They made a shima-shima noise through snow as he drew to his pace. A voice sounded at his back, for indeed the warped door still stood open. A voice came. Back and nae be sae damned selfish! But Jim kept running. Shima-shima , his shoes repeated. Then that voice again. Back and tak in the New Year properly!
     
    Properly ? thought Lucy. A while since she’d heard that one. Why they had to have the Sixties. Properly indeed !
     
    Jim turned around. There stood his councillor father, framed in the brick council house with the cold iron windows. He did look trapped, he looked tired and, though Jim didn’t like to acknowledge this, there were elements of despairing. There was something between them that was invisible. Slanting between them lay the ghost of snow, his mother’s ash, falling on the mountain top, released from the glider window. It was time to get away from all that.
     
    Time indeed, thought Lucy. The world is full of dead mothers.
     
    But something in him made him go back. Something in him made him go back and try to contend with the whole procession. He was no sooner back in the hall, getting a row for melting, than the bell went and it was Ludwig. Come in, come in, said his father. Ye’re ma first foot, Ludwig man, Happy New Year! Happy New Year, Andy, said Ludwig, who was attempting to stamp crimps of hardpacked snow out of his black oxhide motorbike boots. But these prints also, said Ludwig, pointing down with his hook, there is