had exported first coal then slate then sand and glass, before the railway arrived and a subtle Victorian form of gentrification had set in the shape of the railway pier, the Steam Packet Hotel and the clutch of sea-facing villas (only the fishing fleet had remained constant, sporadically crowded amongst its inner harbour in the stony lap of the old town, swelling, dying, burgeoning again, then falling away once more, shrinking like the holes in its nets).
Ashley had dragged me out here, now in the wee small hours of what had become a clear night with the stars steady and sharp in the grip of this November darkness, after the Jacobite Bar and after we’d trooped (victorious at pool, by the way) back to Lizzie and Droid’s flat via McGreedy’s (actually McCreadie’s Fast Food Emporium), and after consuming our fish/pie/black pudding suppers and after a cup of tea and a J or two, and after we’d got back to the Watt family home in the Rowanfield council estate only to discover that Mrs Watt was still up, watching all-night TV (does Casey Casen never sit down in that chair?), and made us more tea, and after a last wee numbrero sombrero in Dean’s room.
‘I’m going for a walk, guys, okay?’ Ash had announced, coming back from the toilet, cistern flushing somewhere in the background, pulling her coat back on.
I’d suddenly got paranoid that I had over-stayed my welcome and - in some dopey, drunken excess of stupidity - missed lots of hints. I looked at my watch, handed the remains of the J to Dean. ‘Aye, I’d better be off too.’
‘I wasn’t trying to get rid of you,’ Ash said, as she closed the front door after us. I’d said goodbye to Mrs Watt; Ash had said she would be back in quarter of an hour or so.
‘Shit. I thought maybe I was being thick-skinned,’ I said as we walked the short path to a wee garden gate in the low hedge.
‘That’ll be the day, Prentice,’ Ash laughed.
‘You really going to walk at this time of night?’ I looked up; the night was clear now, and colder. I pulled on my gloves. My breath was the only cloud.
‘Nostalgia,’ Ash said, stopping on the pavement. ‘Last visit to somewhere I used to go a lot when I was a wean.’
‘Wow, really? How far is it? Can I come?’ I have a fascination with places people think powerful or important. If I hadn’t been still fairly drunk I’d have been a lot more subtle about asking to accompany Ash, but, well, there you are.
Happily, she just laughed quietly, turned on her heel and said, ‘Aye; come on; isn’t far.’
So here we stood, on the wee mound only five minutes from the Watt house, down Bruce Street, through a snicket, across the Oban road and over the weedy waste ground where the dock buildings stood, long ago.
The dock-side was maybe ten metres away; the skeletal remains of a crane stood lop-sided a little way along the cancered tarmac, its foundations betrayed by rotten wooden piling splaying out from the side of the wharf like broken black bones. Mud glistened in the moonlight. The sea was a taste, and a distant glittering that all but disappeared if you looked at it straight. Ash seemed lost in thought, staring away to the west. I shivered, un-studded the wide lapels of the fake biker’s jacket and pulled the zip up to my right shoulder so that my chin was encased.
‘Mind if I ask what we’re doing here?’ I asked. Behind and to our left, the lights of Gallanach were steady orange, like all British towns, forever warning the inhabitants to proceed with caution.
Ash sighed, her head dropped a little. She nodded down, at the ground we stood upon. ‘Thought you might know what this is, Prentice.’
I looked down. ‘It’s a wee lump of ground,’ I said. Ash looked at me. ‘All right,’ I said, making a flapping action with my elbows (I’d have spread my hands out wide, but I wanted to keep them in my pockets, even with my gloves on). ‘I don’t know. What is it?’
Ash bent down, and I saw one pale hand at first stroke the grass, and then dig down, delving into the soil itself. She squatted like that for a moment, then pulled her hand free, rose, brushing earth from her long white fingers.
‘This is the Ballast-Mound, the World-Hill, Prentice,’ she said, and I could just make out her small