The Museum of Doubt by James Meek Read Free Book Online

folk crossing the river there’d be a bridge. A Forth road bridge. They could easily build one. It’d be open round the clock and no-one would ever have to be racing to get the last boat again.
    We’re not racing, though, ’cause we’ve got plenty of time.
    OK, but folk do. And they’re supposed to be all into public safety. I tell you what it is, it’s put there deliberately. It’s a deliberate exception. Because they know you can’t resist it. You want it. You want a place in the country where you can be provoked into taking a risk without going out and looking for it too hard.
    No you don’t.
    You do Con. You know you do. There just aren’t enough realrisks on the go, and you don’t want to go rock climbing or bungee jumping or kayaking, cause you’re getting on, and it’s too much trouble, and they take all the risk out of it anyway, it’s like a fairground ride, and you don’t want to go out looking for a fight, and violence in the pictures is just a wank … so you sit in the pub and you wait until you’re about to miss the ferry.
    Don’t talk this way, Arnie, it’s not good.
    It’s not that you want to die. You want to live. More than anything, you want to live, you want to have even just the next five minutes of your life, never mind seeing the sun come up again. Only there’s something that comes in between wanting one and wanting the other, it’s like a separation, you start believing two different things at the same time, that if you die, it’d be the end, and that you can die without actually dying. That you can watch it. That you can do it again. That it’d be interesting. You really believe that. It’s strange. I don’t understand it. D’you understand it?
    A horn opened up behind us and headlights flared through the rear windscreen. The car behind pulled out sharply and overtook with a roar of contempt. Our speed had dropped to 25. So far the only way we were going to die tonight was getting spannered by a fellow motorist. I wanted to talk about going faster. I wanted to talk about what happened to Arnold’s wife. I didn’t want to upset him.
    I’m not into the risk, I said. I was really wanting to get a lift with Siobhan and sit with her in the moon deck bar in the big white ship and go home.
    Arnold didn’t say anything. I hadn’t thought it was possible to drive any slower in high gear but it seemed we were slipping back to about bicycle pace. I remembered he’d been after Siobhan just after he’d got out, and I remembered he’d been sitting down there in the yeasty fug of the Stoker’s Lounge for two years whilewe’d been up there watching the lights of passing ships through the rain on the glass roof and the moon wax and wane over the flint-coloured water of the firth.
    We passed the Kwik-Fit garage. I turned round to check the time on the digital clock they had.
    Arnie, I said. Let’s talk about time.
    Despite his mastery of the laws of space and time, said Arnold, Albert Einstein never owned a watch and relied on friends to tell him what year it was.
    When we left the pub it was 10.25 by the clock, I said, which was ten minutes fast, so it was 10.15. Your clock said 10.35, but you agreed that was wrong.
    Stonehenge tells the time more accurately than the most sophisticated atomic clock.
    The Kwik-Fit clock we’ve just passed says 10.50.
    The landlord of the Faulkner Arms always sets his clock 10 minutes fast to make sure none of his customers misses the last boat to Fife.
    Christ, was it you told me that?
    I didn’t think you’d believe that one, said Arnold. He’s a landlord, isn’t he? His clock’s slow. So’s mine.
    I looked around. Accurate timekeeping by: Kwik-Fit. Arnold’s car had central locking, controlled from the driver’s seat. Traffic was shooting past. I had the impression we were standing still. But we must have been going at least as fast as a strong freestyle swimmer. Ten minutes to cover seven miles. Not at this rate. Siobhan would be on