1

The road I travelled skirted the estuary. At every second bend I could see that flat expanse of blue grey stretching far out.

If I'd looked hard enough I could have seen the smudge on the horizon where the land poked out a long finger almost as far as the shipping lane, but if I'd done that on this road I'd probably never have made it home.

Home.

I suppose I could call Arden that. More than any place else, I reckon. When I'm far away, that's how I think of it. But the closer I got - and if I was on the Kilcreggan Road, then I was pretty damned close; no turning back now - the less sure I was.

Oh, I'd travelled this road plenty of times, but those times were a while back. This was now and now is always fraught with uncertainty. The picture in my mind always gets rosier in direct relation to the distance from the place I usually call home.

When I was a kid, we'd go on holiday, even once to France where I was sick for a week after a bottle of wine and told I had nobody to blame but myself. Holidays were fine. It was the coming back that sent those tickles of apprehension trailing up my spine. Would our home be there? Would Arden still be the same?

I would always be in the back seat, with my carrier bag filled with books and puzzles to keep me amused as the old Ford, or whatever car my father's salary as a teacher would run to, ate up the miles. My father would drive with his head back, that straight pipe jutting out, humming some classical tune just a shade louder than the engine. My mother would be asleep, curled on her seat, feet tucked up. All I'd see would be a mess of light brown curls, and maybe the glint of her tiny gold earring.

Going home for them was easy. For a six year old in the back seat, looking out at the unfamiliar territory out there, it was a matter of mounting concern. And when we got on the Kilcreggan Road, when my father would nudge my mother awake, it was different. Familiar, but different. Not in a menacing way, but as if it had to be re-affixed in my mind. The house always looked smaller, the garden larger, at least for those first few moments before home was impressed again on a young mind.

Now I had that same feeling, and it wasn't just a fortnight or three weeks that had passed. This was a home-coming. A prodigal returning.

A lot of water had passed under Strowan's Bridge since I had last seen Arden. I'd come back once or twice for the compulsory wedding or two and funerals. The latter (two in quick succession were those of my parents) were in every case occasions of numbing depression from which I had to flee as quickly as decently possible.

No, it was ten years, more like twelve, since I had last thought casually, warmly, of Arden as home.

On tape, another one had stopped biting the dust. The late, great Freddie and his band were now the champions. I cut him off in mid champ. Two more bends, first a right, then a left, then the boundary welcome. Yes?

No. Four more bends. That memory again. The road hadn't changed. The sign was still there, black on white, though, instead of blue. It seemed smaller.

Up and over the bridge, with its sharp right at the bottom, and there I was, in Arden, coming in from the east.

It had changed, although the fabric was essentially the same. There was nothing substantial to the change, just a different feel. It was indeed smaller. Or I was bigger. It seemed to me the roads were narrower, the houses set closer, the trees that bit more shady. It didn't yet have the feel of home. Okay, a small voice whispered inside my head. Let them just smile and say hello, long time no see, how is it going, have a drink.

Nicky Ryan. Hot-shot reporter. Been in some of the world's hottest flashpoints, and faced a lot of things, yet nervous as a schoolboy now. And that was only the half of it. I was coming back to start all over again. I'd made the break. I'd made up my mind that the years chasing stories all over the world with a foot in somebody else's door were no longer for me.

Newspapers had changed. People like Murdoch and the big money-men had seen to that. Opinion was now replacing the truth. Twitter replacing true reporting. And I never had to hack a phone in my life.

I just couldn't change with the times.

I'd grabbed my books and all those half-filled note-books with the half-chewed plots, the novels and travel books I'd promised myself I'd write one of these days, and said:

'Do it. Do it now.'

This was now. This was me coming home. This was me going hell for leather to get it done and see if I could really write more than just column inches.

And what was really bothering me was that I didn't know if the old home town had changed, or whether I could.

Let me tell you a little bit about Arden. It's not a big town even by local standards. A large village would probably give you the picture, housing maybe three thousand people.

But as I've said, it's old. Until the government started centralising everything, Arden was quite happy to trundle on. Officially, and the tiny council which loosely ran the place was fond of reminding you, it was known as The Royal Burgh of the Parish of Arden. A mouthful for a place its size.Somewhere along the line, not long after William the Conqueror took the south, one of the Scottish kings granted the harbour town royal burgh status, which was a bigger deal in those days than it is now.

Being a Royal Burgh meant that Arden could have its own town council and make by-laws. It had a court and a sheriff who was the local judge and a provost who was a kind of county sheriff. They could jail people, and they could hang people, and if you didn't go to church on a Sunday they had all sorts of painful ways of saving your soul.

Robert the Bruce died near here of what the history books reckon was leprosy, but now, after all that happened here that summer, I'm not so sure. Until only a few years ago, nobody knew that the mound around the Ardmhor peninsula was a Roman wall, made at the same time they were building the big one right across the country to the River Forth. There's some standing stones poking out of the soil in a few places which make Stonehenge look like a new building project, and in the mud flats at the east of the town they once dug up a dugout canoe which was thousands of years old. Inside that were some bones which were said to be near enough human as to make no difference, and others positively identified as mammoth.

It's an old place, and probably hasn't changed all that much in a long time.

The parish council allotted some town edge bogland at the Milligs at the turn of the century - the 19^th century - for workers cottages, and later on some of the rich traders put up those sandstone mansions on the slope above the harbour where they could overlook Westbay, where most folk lived. Then, as now, you had three classes of people, easily identified by their location in the town. Milligs was poor, Westbay was middle, and Upper Arden was lottery win territory.

Looking back, I remember the feeling of awe when I considered that these people had gardeners, and housekeepers. In my young mind's eye they were close to royalty. My perspective has changed, but that feeling of being not among the Upper Arden dwellers is something that still sits uneasily in those shady corners below conscious thought.

Back then Upper Arden was Rovers, Westbay was second-hand Fords and Milligs was pedestrian only. So what has changed? Ah, the internal combustion engine has reached the Milligs. The town's scrap yard is down there, and the sons of pedestrians drive beat-up bangers with dented bumpers and patching of fibreglass fill. Not too many insurance certificates, or working sidelights, but Milligs has been emancipated into the era of road transport.

Westbay is where most of the people live. It merges with Milligs from the east and crowds round the harbour in the west where the old Royal Burgh peters out to good farming on the shore side, and some low craggy cliffs north of the main road. Westbay now is new compact cars. The people live in sandstone cottages and semi- detached and terrace houses one or two storeys high, or in those white rough-cast boxes that builders are throwing up all over the country, in the few areas in Arden where they've found an acre or two to cram them on.

Upper Arden is still leafy and winding, the imposing homes set well back from the roads in well-tended gardens where rhododendron and azalea flank long pebbled or tarmac drives. There are bay windows, multi-chimney roofs. Here it is Range Rover country. It is Beemer and Merc off-roaders. It is hacking jackets and green rubber boots. The tennis club, the dinner party, the pony paddock. The wealth that shouts down the hill to those below:

We've got it. And we always will.

Past the sign there's a stand of trees on either side, followed by a couple of smallholdings, and then the first houses flanking the Kilcreggan Road which veers sharply away from the shore. The Milligs. Even here you have a sub-division of class or wealth. The shore side, with its scrap yard and the town dump and the great gun-barrel of the main sewage pipe stretching far out on to the flats, it is tougher and rougher and more ramshackle than the other side of the street. Shore side has shacks and pigeon coops.

It has a couple of dog pounds where no doubt live the many times great-grandsons of those huge German shepherds that scared the shit out of me when I went exploring the dangerous, exciting side of town. On the far side of the road, the council housing was plain but solid enough under the peeling paint and the grey roughcast. There is a section of allotments where people grow potatoes and cabbages, and a few folk raised a chicken or two. No rhododendrons here.

There was a corner store and a hardware store that used to be run by old Mr Smollett who'd sell us slingshots - the kind with the thumbprint grip that give you a black nail every second shot - then threaten us with a severe kick up the arse if he ever saw us playing with them near his shop. I was wondering if he was still alive when I passed by, slowing down to a crawl, and I was pleasantly surprised - no enormously surprised and pleased when there he was, still wearing that old brown overall with the big pockets on the front, with that that close-cropped grey moustache. He was coming out of the shop, preceded by two small boys, bending low to tell them something. I could swear that if I could lip read I'd make out what he was saying: 'There y'are now, and if you fire that thing near my window you'll get a toe up your arses. All the way up.'

On the right, still on the far side, I saw my first change. Ronnie Scott's garage had disappeared, to be replaced by one of those glass and steel beam carport filling stations with a tyre bay and an accessory shop.

Ah, that was a loss. I teamed about at school with Ronnie's son Alan who was set to become a fair mechanic himself. We used to hang about in the workshop, among all those old, oily tools, camshafts, crankshafts and a huge lifting jack that took the two of us to pump, and then we'd stand on its lifter for that delicious moment when the other would twist the grip and float us gently to the ground. The big asbestos shack always smelled of old rubber and rust and oil. It was a place where we could use the grindstone to whittle down broken hack-saw blades into arrowheads and daggers; where we could sit in the cabs of smelly diesel trucks, or maybe in the front seat of a Jaguar from up the hill and imagine haring around the Monza circuit.

Alan's dad used to wink at us from under whichever car he'd be, or from the depths of his mechanics pit, occasionally yelling at us to mind we don't get mucky footprints on Doctor MacGregor's seat, or not to let off the handbrake of the big yellow caterpillar tractor. That was a garage. What I was pulling into was a filling station with a steel and concrete bay behind it.

My backside was sore and my accelerator foot was stiff after all the miles the Subaru had rolled since I had left London late on the previous afternoon. I climbed down from the high seat and unhooked the nozzle from the pump. I let it fill, trying to stretch and arch my back with only one hand free.

The big tank took twelve gallons and a small fortune before the automatic cut-off. I flipped the cap, jangled the nozzle back into its place and crossed over to the cash desk.

Passing by the pumps I realised what was really so different about the yard. It wasn't just new motorway modern. It was bigger, and set further back from the road, and the workshop and small glass-fronted showroom stood where the Scotts' little cottage and garden had been the last time I'd seen it. I reckoned maybe his father had given up trying to make the small operation work, although he always seemed to be busy whenever we hung about on the rainy afternoons. Alan was determined to be a mechanic just like him, a wizard of the machine, who could get any engine back to life. But I assumed with the recession he'd probably sold up to the multinationals and got out of Arden. In at the cash desk a young girl with short hair and a smattering of freckles flashed me a glimpse perfect teeth. I bought some milk and biscuits which brought the bill up to enough to give me one and a third coffee mugs. The smile vanished when I brought out my accordion of credit cards. For a second she looked at them blankly, then smiled that pretty way again and said: 'I'm sorry, we don't take them.'

'What, none of them?' I asked. 'Not even Visa?'

'I'm afraid not. The boss says it's cash or cheque. We don't have one of the machines to work these cards.' Normally I would have grumbled about the inconvenience, but she was only a girl doing a boring job, and the last thing I wanted on my first day back was an argument.

'That's OK,' I said, reaching inside my leather jerkin, before I halted. I'd just remembered using my last cheque in a similar service station outside of Watford. Worse still, I only had about five pounds and small change in the pocket of my jeans. I stood and stared at her for a moment, then the silliness of the situation got me and I burst out laughing. She started laughing too.

'You're not going to believe this, but I haven't enough money. I thought everybody took credit cards these days, but I'm wrong. So what do I do now?'

'I'd better get the boss,' she said, still smiling, and pressed the button on a bell which rang faintly somewhere in the other building. I nosed around among the oil cans and rows of replacement wiper blades. She pressed the buzzer again, and there was a muffled reply from the workshop: 'All right Janey, I'm coming.'

This, I assumed, was the boss, so I pretended to read the de-icer cans left over from winter while mentally composing how I was going to tell a complete stranger that he'd have to trust me until the next day for his cash.

'Well sir, what seems to be the problem?' A tone of voice which said: 'This explanation had better be good.'

I turned around to see a tall, slim-built man with a shock of jet-black hair falling over his forehead. His eyes widened in instant recognition just as the thought flicked through my mind that that hank of hair was just like his father's.

'I don't believe it,' he said, starting to smile as he crossed the couple of yards to grasp my hand and pump it vigorously.

'Nicky Ryan skint. I never thought I'd live to see the day.'

'Flat broke and up the creek without a paddle,' I said, returning his handshake. 'I can give you a fiver down payment on account if you'll trust me till tomorrow.'

'Ha. Trust you. You? A washed-up old hack? Are you kidding?'

He didn't wait for a reply. 'Credit cards? We don't take them any more. I quit about six months ago because took too long to get the cash back. And with the by-pass it's hardly worth my while.'

Before I could say anything, Alan gestured around his forecourt and said: 'What do you think of this then? A big change from the old place.'

'That's what I thought when I pulled in. I thought there was something wrong. It's too neat. Not like it was when it was a going concern.

'Going concern? It's been great. I tell you, I haven't looked back since I got the franchise.'

'Oh? You got a dealership then? I thought maybe your dad had sold up?'

'No,' Alan said, still beaming. 'I got the Caterpillar deal for the whole district. Everything from tractors to farm machinery ... plus Toyota spares and repairs.'

I looked him up and down, taking in the neat tweed jacket and well-cut slacks, clean hands and a white collar.

'You've not been spending too much time under trucks,' I said. 'Got a whole team doing the dog work for you? I thought you always wanted to be the best mechanic in the world.'

'But I am, I am. I just found a way to do it without lying on my back under a sump all day. I took over seven years ago, but I didn't want to rely on just the village trade. And I am the best anyway!'

'Alan, that's terrific,' I said, and I meant it. 'But, I tell you, just when I came round that comer I was thinking of us playing about in the garden. Don't you miss the old place?'

'No, I needed the space. My dad works for me, doing the books. He's better at that than he was at fixing cars. He's got a house only a couple of doors down from your grandad's old place, and guess where I live now?'

The look on his face told me one of the Milligs commoners had made it up the leafy slope.

'Down the shore side,' I volunteered.

'Don't be such an arse.,

'Okay, I'll have another guess. Bayview?'

'Close enough. Harbour Avenue. Just round the comer.' I could see Alan was getting enormous pleasure telling me of his step up in the world. It gave me a pleasant buzz too.

'Upper Arden. Why fan mah brow, mastah,' I said, dredging up a phrase from schooldays.

'I just moved in last year. It's the old Erskine place, just on the corner.'

I couldn't place it yet, but I nodded anyway.

'I suppose you've got maids and gardeners too?'

'Don't be daft. Just a man who cuts the grass once in a while, and my wife looks after the house. She's happier than a pig in shit to tell you the truth.'

'I'll bet she is. Who is she anyway?'

'She's my wife.'

'Yes. No. I mean who did you marry? Do I know her?'

'I don't know. Maybe you do. Janet McCrossan. She was a couple of years younger than us. Came from Shandon.'

I had a vague recollection of a small girl with a fair pony tail and a bright smile that could have been her, but I wasn't sure. "You probably never met her,' Alan said before I could reply, 'but if you stay around you'll have to come up and see the place. And meet Janet too.' I could feel Alan was dying to show off his big house, and frankly, I was keen to see it. He seemed pleased when I told him I'd be staying around for quite a while and that I'd love to come and see his mansion on the hill as soon as I'd got my own things sorted out. He assured me there was no rush for the cash I owed him, and I could tell he meant it. As I left his filling station he asked: 'And how have you been going? You don't seem to have changed that much.'

'Only a bit older and wiser, and still the best with a slingshot.'

As I adjusted my seatbelt and jiggled my backside into the position it had kept for the last four hundred miles I caught a glimpse of Alan's face in the offside mirror. He was shaking his head and smiling.

I nosed the car out on to the Kilcreggan Road, pleased that it had been Alan and not some service manager who would have made a big song and dance about not getting the cash.

The road took me over Strowan's Bridge which effectively marks the boundary between the east and west of town, an old stone hump-back, just wide enough to take two-way traffic as long as each way isn't a twenty tonner. Strowan's Well, which runs below, is a clear stream which starts way up on the moorland at Cardross Hill, neatly bisects the town and forks east and west to empty into the firth on each side of Ardmhor, that big hunk of tree-covered rock that juts out into the grey water to the south.

On the down-slope of the bridge the road continued, past another couple of smallholdings and the beginning of Westbay, the solid middle-area of Arden with its tight sprawl of cottages and two-storey buildings, its neat shopping centre, the town hall and little cinema, the library and the school-house. At first glance, and from a speed that had slowed to ten miles an hour as I eased the jeep along while searching for a parking space, the changes had not been too drastic. The grocery store had been converted into that type of mini-market that has sprung up, like mushrooms all over this country and just about everywhere else.

McKay's had been a family concern then, one of those old-fashioned places where the potatoes come dirty from burlap sacks, and huge jars of boiled sweets are kept well out of reach of small hands.

Now there would be rows of canned food, trolleys, and girls with uniforms, kneeling in the aisles, click, click clicking with their label guns. I found a space in the little car park they'd carved out behind the new store. I planned to pick up a few provisions, maybe some beer, before going down the harbour road to the cottage. My aunt, who'd looked after my grandfather for a decade or so - not that the old salt needed much looking after - had been living there since she'd sub-let grandad's place, and had found this a convenient time to visit her aunt, my Great Aunt Jean. Knowing Aunt Martha's habits, I reckoned the place would be pretty shipshape. Strangely when I thought back, I seem to remember thinking of grandad's place as a second home, a place where I spent a lot of hours, weekends and evenings, never tiring of the old travelling tales of the old travelling man.

Holly's bar was still there, the first place I ever had a drink with the real men when I was only sixteen. Big John Hollinger, a great bear of a man with a ruddy, laughing face behind a big highlander's beard, had known exactly how old I was, but he'd let me buy a Guinness anyway. I hadn't a clue what I was drinking, and I still cringe with embarrassment when I remember how he'd stared me in the eye until I'd drunk every last drop of the thick, creamy beer. I hadn't the taste for it then, but that was a while ago, and I planned, in the very near future, to head up to Holly's for a refresher course.

Mary Baker's, the most aptly named shop in town, still displayed its small loaves and tea cakes in the front window, but the shop next door had changed. I recalled it as a small clothing store where mothers would drag their reluctant children on the last few days of the summer vacation to have them fitted out with the school uniform.

Now the shop was some sort of arty-crafty souvenir place with shells and tartan rugs, odd-looking home-made candles and grotesque little pottery representations of the Loch Ness monster, who, if he looks anything like he's depicted in these tawdry tourist shops in every west coast village, should pray for extinction.

Mary Baker - the second that is - her mother having passed on even before I'd left, was essentially the same. Those glass display cases were still filled with confections that she had been baking since early. The danish pastry was thick and light; the brown loaves were solid, and roughcast with pure grain which always came from the local mills, mostly the little granary up at the Abbey seminary where the trainee priests practised self-sufficiency to help them get along with their upcoming vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

Mary recognised me right away and flashed me a big smile from behind those huge bottle-end glasses. I could have been there for the day, if I'd stayed to answer all her questions. As it was it took me half an hour to buy a couple of spicy buns and a thick farmhouse loaf which I intended to savour.

In the supermarket I found everything as expected. I loaded up a trolley with tins and packets and a dozen cans of Belgian beer. I added a bottle of whisky and another of vodka, having first checked to find out whether the store accepted credit cards. I made a mental note to get to the bank on the following day anyway, but the little supermarket was keen to take almost any kind of plastic I threw at it.

All the provisions were crammed in two plastic bags in the back of the jeep, precariously balanced on my boxes and travelling bags.

The cottage looked tiny as I drove round the right angled turn into the avenue. Tiny, a bit shabby, as if it had been left to lie, forgotten, for a while.

I stood back and had a good look at the front of the building, noticed patches where the sandstone had worn, and a couple of slates missing from the roof were angled up in the gutter. The paint around the sash windows was cracked, but the glass was clean. No doubt aunt Martha had been bustling around the overstuffed armchairs with the cluster. My old key opened the Yale lock easily and the door, which used to squeak, didn't. Inside smelled of air freshener and bleach, so I knew Martha had been busy, but it was dark in the living room, a kind of depressing shade, and quiet too, as if the room was sleeping, not really expecting a caller.

The window let in little light, but outside it was overcast, and the old dark green curtains were designed to keep the out-side out. The first thing I did was pull them apart to their greatest extent, and tie them back with the braids. The room looked a little brighter. I dumped the groceries on the sofa and sat on the edge of the easy chair that had once been my father's, feeling almost that I shouldn't be sitting there. The place was empty, except for me and a million memories. A sprinkling of tiny dust motes caught a stray patch of light that must have slipped through the clouds, and sparkled lazily in the air. This was the room where I'd spent a huge chunk of my life with my mother and father. Now there was just me.

Just me and the memories that jostled and swirled like half-recognised faces at a busy party. I nodded briefly to them all as they came and paused before moving back into the swirl. I popped a lager, refreshingly cold, and maybe had a few more while I sat and ruminated. Those snatches of memory loomed in and faded out before I could grab a hold of them. It was a disorientating feeling because my mind couldn't settle.

It was late when I decided to go to bed. Up the narrow staircase the walls shifted just a little, letting me know I should have gone easier with the cold beers. Strangely, I instinctively put my foot on the inside edge of the seventh stair, the one that had always creaked. After all those years, that just came back to me out of the cobwebs in the back of my head, and it wasn't until I reached the top landing that I realised I'd done it.

When I was very small I used to sneak down those stairs in the early mornings of summer, tip-toeing slowly, reaching up to hold the smooth wood banister, heading into that pool of light the early morning summer sun would shoot through the kitchen window. It was always quiet, except for the low rumbling snore from my parents, room, and maybe a couple of early birds out in the back yard.

I knew that if I stood on that creak on the seventh stair then one of them would wake up and order me to get back to bed. If I made it downstairs, I could grab a biscuit and a drink of milk and gingerly snap back the old mortise lock on the back door and out into the morning. Not creaking on the seventh step had become one of those fixed-in rules that never got broken.

I grinned to myself when I realised I'd kept the rule.

My bed was still the same, but the room like the house and everything in it, seemed smaller. Otherwise it hadn't changed. My old pictures were still on the walls. Me and my grandad out shooting duck down on the mud flats. Me being prepared and looking solemn in the scouts.

My posters of old guitar heroes and a beat up Fender leaning in the corner. I knew if I opened the drawer next to the bed I'd still find the bits of string, the old penknives with their smooth-worn handles, and probably a lot of unsent letters to a few half-remembered girls.

I shucked off my jeans and threw my shirt over the chair by the window, before pulling back the goose-down duvet and crawling into bed.

The last thing I remember is thinking of my mother hanging out my fathers white shirts on the washing line where the sunlight shone right through them. I don't know where that picture came from, probably somewhere down deep, but she was looking over her shoulder at me as she clipped the clothespegs into place and was smiling at me.

I dimly remember smiling back at her, but I must have fallen asleep pretty quickly, for there was nothing after that until . . .