Something of the tone of the book can be gleaned from the definition of the ‘air-kissing’ of the subtitle given in the book’s glossary:

‘air-kissing: degenerate form of public greeting widely practised by those in the creative industries…’

Oh, feel the sting in ‘degenerate’ and ‘creative’!

I’m sure I won’t be the only one to grin with wicked satisfaction at the recognition of that quintessentially Scottish mindset of suspicion of and contempt for ostentatious display. The question which exercises the author’s mind and sense of humour is ‘Where does that mindset come from?’

To answer the question, Duncan has written a number of essays, part reflective, part memoir, and interspersed them with illustrative Scottish sayings and aphorisms. The essays roam round the oddities of the Scottish character and also provide a lively and moving portrait of his grandparents.

The first essay ‘You Mark My Words’ introduces them. Grandfather, coal miner, independent thinker and atheist (for him, both God and the Devil are ‘a pair of chancers’), rearranges live coals in the fire with his bare hands, while informing young Duncan that he’ll be hanged as a murderer one of these days if he doesn’t take the smirk off his face. In this book, no child faces a glowing happy future or enthusiastic building of his self-esteem:

‘Millions o’ women bring forth in pain millions o’ bairns that arenae worth haein’’

In fact, adults don’t have much future either.

‘First braith
Beginning o’ yer daith’

as popular Calvinist wisdom has it.

Grandmother, singing Gaelic psalms in the kitchen, is equally dire in her prophecies about Grandfather’s future if he doesn’t give up his whisky. Their relationship is spelled out in a ‘synchronised duet’ of invective and insult. The Calvinist religion cuts down to size and abhors self-satisfaction and cockiness. Laconic speech is the order of the day and overt display of affection frowned on. But just when you get to the point of thinking Duncan must have had a miserable childhood, he comes up with a lyrical description of his fishing trips with Grandfather. They row home in the dark with Grandfather whistling over their catch of herring and it transpires the old man has poetry in his soul after all. And affection. To his grandson, he transfers a love of silent contemplation and the ability to admire the minutiae of nature. And when Grandmother dies (recounted in ‘Inheritor’), the old man in his terse way displays a tearing emotional pain. He shows Duncan two photos, one of grandmother as a bride, the other as an old lady, and in a few words describes how it was that she came to lose smiling and singing and laughing. Bereft, he dies within a week of her and leaves Duncan with an assortment of belongings, the mere listing of which tells something of their lives together and demonstrates vividly Duncan’s sense of loss.

Other essays meditate on the nature of Scottishness. Whisky is held responsible for a ‘saturnine and malignant turn of mind’, for self destructive tendencies, for explosive and aggressive behaviour. Duncan includes some newspaper headlines describing drink fuelled crime and the old charge of ‘putting the lieges in a state of fear and alarm’: Apparently, someone once set off a nautical flare in his girlfriend’s bedroom. Why? Well, he never listened to the warnings against whisky, that liquid damnation, and serves him right. Serves him right is an integral part of the unforgiving culture of the Calvinist. Duncan’s uncle, a tattooed lover of whisky, would be devastated if he were to be spared his Hangover. This is the Calvinist version of yin-yang principles of balance and harmony: happiness/gloom, enjoyment/misery, pleasure/punishment. Guilt and suffering are a ‘necessary moral device’.

According to Duncan, a Scottish Thesaurus is heavily weighted in favour of words of gloom and doom. There are 218 words for rain, mist, snow, 20 for darkness, and loads for madness. There are only a few for fine weather, or contentment or happiness. The mystery is that the north east of Scotland has less rain and more sun than anywhere else in Scotland. Does the language reflect Calvinist gloom rather than the landscape? Read Duncan’s descriptions of the sea haars and the long dark nights, the last flichter of light as the sun goes down on a winter’s day, the harshness of the working man’s life, and decide for yourself. Duncan is at his best here. And the collective Scottish Calvinist consciousness is at its best in the assortment of belittling Scottish sayings, to which Duncan attributes the Scottish artist’s notable distinction: he has to work very hard indeed to overcome his lack of self belief.

I scanned those lacerating aphorisms with grim enthusiasm, looking for my own personal favourite – but it wasn’t there. It was a saying of a teacher of mine (is this a notable omission from Duncan’s meditations on Scottish character formation? Where is the fierce Scottish schoolmarm?). She used to seize girls who dared to wear mascara by the collars of their blazers and hiss, ‘In this world, lass, you’re either use or ornament, and you’re nae ornament’ before applying a nippy liquid to remove said mascara.

I reckon she was a Calvinist.

Marion Arnott lives in Paisley, Scotland. She was winner of the Phillip Good Memorial Prize For Women's Fiction 1998, CWA Short Dagger 2001 and shortlisted for CWA Short Dagger 2002. Work has appeared in Scottish Child, West Coast, Solander Magazine, Peninsula , QWF, Hayakawa Mystery Magazine (Japan), Books Ireland, Northwords, Chapman, Crimewave, and Datlow and Winding's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror volume 15. Her short story collection 'Sleepwalkers,' was published in August, 2003 by Elastic Press. To visit Marion's Showcase on this website, click here

© 2004 Laura Hird All rights reserved.