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The Old Country The next morning, I found myself wandering through Waverely Station again in the early light, doing nothing in particular but just soaking up the spirit of the place. I bought two more Sharpe books, hooked on his weird writing. Up the Royal Mile, I stopped and bought the Scotsman and two London papers and sat on the stone steps of an office building to read them. It was a brisk morning, the temperature around 50o and a moderate breeze making it difficult to keep the papers steady. I was wearing my leather jacket. If anyone ever told me that I would be wearing that jacket in July, I would have thought they were nuts. Around me people were going to work, and I felt a renegade thrill, as if I was playing hooky. I got back to the Arden and finally made up my mind to call my cousin Charles. Before I planned my trip, I had no idea I had any cousins, much less one in Scotland. But a distant relative found out about my trip from my grandmother and gave me the name and address of Charles Barclay, 81, of Gourock. I wrote him a letter a few months before and he wrote back and inviting me to come and visit when I arrived. Gourock was on the banks of the Firth of Clyde in the county of Strathclyde, northwest of Glasgow and about 60 miles from Edinburgh. I had already checked the train schedules and found that getting to Gourock would pose no particular problem. Around 10 AM, I gathered up a handful of ten-pence coins, "tens," the British equivalent of a quarter, and headed for the pay phone in the lobby. I had read about British phones, and knew that for some reason they required you to put in the coins after your party picked up the phone. You were signaled to do this by fast little cheeps, "pips," which drowned out any conversation until the money shut them off. Which is exactly how it worked. As soon as Charles said "Hello," the damn phone started beeping madly. I yelled for him to wait a second as I shoved tens into the phone. (And "shoved" is the correct word -- it takes a considerable amount of force to get the coins in.) Finally the beeping stopped and I identified myself. "Scott!" he said in a loud, strong voice. "Ye made it! Can ye come out here today?" No problem, I said. "Great! Gi'e me a call when ye get to the station and I'll come get ye!" I hung up and gathered up some belongings in my shoulder bag. I caught the 11.30 to Glasgow. What a train! If the train station was a surprise, the train itself was a revelation. Clean, quick, efficient, the train left Waverely exactly at 11.30 and arrived at Glasgow's Queen Street Station on the dot at 12.15, just as it said in the schedule book. The seating consisted of upholstered settees facing each other over tables. The kicker was that the 40-mile trip to Glasgow cost me a grand total of œ2.50, or about $3.20. I was very impressed. The train to Gourock left from Glasgow's other train station, Glasgow Central, and I boarded a free shuttle bus to get there. We rode through about 10 blocks of downtown Glasgow, full of discount stores and groceries and looking, strangely enough, a lot like downtown Minneapolis (without the skyways, of course). Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland and the fourth-largest in Great Britain (after London, Manchester and Birmingham), is on a flat tidal plain, with no particular geologic features and vast stretches of run-down, non-descript buildings. After Edinburgh, it looked a little seedy. Glasgow Central was an immense place under a glass roof, smelling of diesel fumes and swarming with pigeons. The Gourock train was leaving from Track 23, and I hustled over. It was an older train, not the sleek modern design of the Edinburgh-Glasgow train. The cars were panelled in some dark wood with brass fittings, with frosted designs around the edges of the windows, very Victorian and Holmesian. I was one of only six or seven passengers as we headed west towards Gourock. We rattled through some land remarkable for its volatility -- one second serene and pastoral, the next grim and industrial and dirty. We passed some islands set into the river, each topped with the crumbling ruin of castles so old no one knew their names. The river widened with each mile until it started to resemble a bay. We passed through the city of Greenock, home port of the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth during the war and where my father, an AB2 with the Navy, had spent some shore leave from his escort carrier, the Salerno Bay, in 1952, and finally pulled into Gourock. The train station was on the river's edge, next to the Caledonian MacBrayne ferry terminal. Emerging from the station, I found Gourock spread out above me, clinging to the side of a large ragged hill. Wispy grey and black clouds scudded across the sky in different directions. The water of the Clyde was covered with whitecaps. It was what my father referred to as "wardroom weather." The high street in Gourock curved along a rock shelf some tens of feet above the water. Across a car park and on the corner of the high street was a large bar and hotel, the Kempock. Truth be told, I was a little anxious about meeting Charles, as I was about meeting anybody for the first time. To delay my phone call, I walked over to the Kempock and ordered a pint of Guinness, the first and only time I ordered my favorite beer while in Scotland. The Kempock bar was panelled in shabby wood veneer, and a tough in a leather jacket pounded away maniacally on a pinball machine. "Would ye be wantin' something to eat w' that?" the weathered barmaid asked. I said no and she turned away as if I'd insulted her mother. I nursed the beer for a while and retreated to the back of the bar to call Charles. "What are ye wearin' so I can find ye?" I told him about my blue jeans, my green sweater, my red windbreaker. My God, I was too colorful! I looked like an American! I walked back over to the train station. Five minutes later a fairly new Cortina drove up and Charles waved from the window. He was ruddy and sturdy and lit up with a smile. He seemed closer to 61 than 81. "Cousin Scott!" He leapt from the car and pumped my hand vigorously. "Welcome to Gourock!" We got in the car and headed along the high street. I had never been in a right-hand drive car before, and it felt as if the car was driving itself. Beside me, Charles radiated a health and a vigor and a joie de vivre I found intimidating in someone his age. He pointed ahead to a low white structure perched on the river. It looked like the Maritime Museum in San Francisco. "That's the RGYC, the Royal Gourock Yacht Club. Did ye know I used to be Commodore of that club?" I said I didn't. I didn't know much about him at all. "Och, yea. I retired from it a few years ago. Getting old!" He patted his stomach. "Are ye hungry? Let's see if we can get summat to eat at the Club." We parked alongside the club and leaned into the winds whipping off the river, smelling of seaweed and heather. Inside I was introduced to the "nice couple" who managed the club. It turned out that the kitchen staff was off, this being Tuesday. "Och, you're right!" Charles hit his forehead theatrically. "How could I be so stupid?" We walked back to the car and out of reflex I started to get in on the right side of the car. "Takes some getting used to!" Charles laughed as I circled the car. The Cortina climbed the steep streets of Gourock and brought us to Firth Crescent, looking, in its tidiness and newness, like the suburban California streets that Spielberg always uses in his movies. Charles' house was grey and looked out over a valley to the river and the land beyond. We walked through the living room, filled with books and pictures, and right to the bar. "You'll be wanting something to warm up wi'," he said, opening a bottle of Famous Grouse whisky. "Water or ice?" I took it straight, and he twinkled approvingly. "Aye, you're a Scotsman all right." He dropped a few ice cubes in his and we sat in the living room. It was a cozy room, light and comfortable. His favorite chair was positioned before a TV and a TV table which held the remote control and the TV listings from the Daily Scotsman. "Aye, I love the tellyvision." I tasted the Famous Grouse and was impressed. I said I'd never heard of it before. "Och, it's the largest selling whisky in Scotland. You don't have it over in America yet? S'pity." We talked for a long time, trading stories of our families. Charles' uncle, Robert Archibald Fleming, was my great-great grandfather, which put Charles a full three generations behind me. He had been born in Gourock in 1903, when Theodore Roosevelt was president, Arthur Balfour was prime minister, Edward VII was king and Winston Churchill was a 29- year old newly-elected member of Parliament. Charles moved to Glasgow in 1921, getting an office job with a coal mining company. He eventually rose to be president of the firm. He married a woman named Mary Peacock, and had two daughters, Moira and Fiona. He worked in Glasgow for over forty years, retiring to his hometown in 1968. That year, he took a trip to America, spending two weeks in Chicago and the Fleming family seat in Coal City, Illinois. His wife had died in 1982, and now Charles mainly stayed at home, happy with his books and his memories and his Famous Grouse, which he was drinking in prodigious amounts with no apparent effect. I was having trouble keeping up with him. Talking to him was fascinating, not only for the relish with which he talked about everything, but also for the strange echoes I saw in him. Both my parents were only children, and my grandparents' brothers and sisters were not on speaking terms most of the time. Therefore, I had grown up with a very small group of my family and had never really given any thought to family resemblances and genetic connections. Charles had a way of turning his head -- it's hard to explain -- which reminded me of my sister. The handwriting in his letter was eerily identical to my dead grandfather's, and the house was full of fresh flower arrangements -- a strange hobby for a Scotsman -- which could have been made by my mother, who was vice-president of her neighborhood garden club. Charles gave me a tour of the house. Beyond the kitchen was a screened-in porch, useful on warm days, which, he told me with infinite disappointment, had not come yet. "This is awful weather," he said, waving his hand towards the windows and the flying grey clouds. "It's been like this all summer! I wish you could see it when it's warm here." Upstairs were two small bedrooms, neat and tidy as only fastidious bachelors can make them. From his bedroom window I could see across the river. "That's Holy Loch over there," he said, pointing. Really? I didn't realize we were that close to Holy Loch, where the US Navy has a major nuclear submarine base. I'd always been fascinated by submarines, and I thought it funny that I had to come all the way to Scotland to get this close to them. Charles talked of the RGYC and his days there. Each year, the club sponsored a week- long sail among the Hebrides, to Jura, Mull, Islay, Skye, in addition to innumerable smaller trips. He spoke of the sea with a far-away look in his eye, an enthusiasm I envied. As a kid, I'd also been fascinated with sailing stories, especially single-handed adventures like Robert Manry's Atlantic crossing in Tinkerbelle and Kenechi Hori's voyage in Koduku across the Pacific. I asked him a lot of sailing questions. Sad to say, at the age of 29 I still had never been in a sailboat of any kind. He was telling of one of his sailing trips when a movement outside his living room window caught my eye. Was that what I thought it was? "Aye," he said, picking up a pair of binoculars he kept by the window. "It's one of yours." Before us, coming upriver and slowing for the turn into Holy Loch, was an Los Angeles- class attack submarine, black and lethal in the shifting sunlight. I went upstairs to get a better vantage point for my camera, and came back down excited by the sight. I asked Charles if he minded if I wandered around Gourock and took a few pictures of the place. He encouraged me to, and I trotted down the street and into one of the main streets leading back to the town center. I passed a lot of houses which were built to take advantage of the view of the Clyde, with big picture windows and rooftop studies. Wandering down the high street, with its classically British mixture of "electric" shops and pubs, I was surprised to find that Gourock seemed to be populated by yuppies. Men in three-piece suits with briefcases and women in business suits with big floppy ties, carrying large loose carry-alls and wearing sneakers, were everywhere. It was a bizarre contrast with downtown Gourock itself, smelling of 800 years of commercial fishing and crowded with decaying reminders of Empire. Where the hell do these people work? I noticed another ruin on the hill above town and dug out my guidebook. Built God-knows-when by God-knows- whom -- another of Britain's paleolithic mysteries. I found a public park, complete with playground and a few benches. A plaque on a tree caught my eye: "This tree planted by HRH Queen Elizabeth II on the occasion of the royal visit to Gourock, 22 June 1967." Up the street, the Gourock cathedral, massive and deserted, sat on a plot of completely naked land, surrounded by vacant lots and looking like the survivor of a bombing. Tiring, I hailed a cab to go back to Charles'. The cabbie had never heard of Firth Crescent, and I tried to guide him through the unfamiliar streets as best as I could remember. When I got back, Charles gave me another whisky and we sat down on the couch. Before we could say anything, we both dozed off, lulled into sleep by the whisky. We awoke together ten minutes later, smiling sheepishly at our ruin. I allowed that I would have to get back to Edinburgh pretty soon. "Not before dinner," Charles said, hustling me to the car. We stopped at the RGYC again, but alas, there was no dinner either tonight. We ended up at the Firth Hotel, where the barman, waitresses and help all greeted Charles like an uncle. He proudly introduced me all around as his "American cousin, Scott!" We had salmon and whisky, the clouds outside the picture windows parting and a shaft of clean late afternoon sunlight falling across the river and our table. Charles waxed philosophical -- he'd had a good life, things were great, he hoped I could be as happy and content as he was. We drank to it. He attacked his fish with the same intensity with which he had tackled everything that day, finishing it before me and sighing contentedly. Tutting at my objections, he paid for the dinner and we drove off. When he dropped me at the train station, we had an emotional farewell -- or as emotional as two Scotsman can have. A firm handshake, a firm look in the eye, a firm nod of the head. When my train pulled out of the station into the reddening day, Charles was standing by his car, waving vigorously. I was proud to have some of Charles in my gene pool. Again I had to switch stations in Glasgow and decided to walk to Queen Street. Glasgow bustled around me, the rush hour full of cars and people. After a few minutes I was lost, and asked a woman with beautiful legs the way to the station. She laughed and pointed behind me. "That's it, guv." I was early for the train and walked across the street to a pub full of stockbrokers and business types hoisting a few before going home. Behind me, two men argued over a cricket match. My train pulled into Edinburgh at about 22.00, and I walked up the Leith Road, searching for new ways up to my hotel. I passed a rough-looking bar, the Jailhouse, surrounded by punks and motorcycles. I figured I'd pass on it for now. I had a Coke in the hotel bar -- another whisky and I wouldn't be responsible -- and sat up reading the second Tom Sharpe book, Vintage Stuff, in my room until midnight. As I plunged into sleep, a dog was whining outside my window, trying to get into the garbage cans. Good luck, pal.
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