Between Seeing and Believing
by Kirsty Eccles
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: When fact and fiction become blurred in the mists of time.
_____________________________________________________________________
When you are four or five you know that seeing is believing. You believe that the camera can’t lie. Or you did in the days before Photoshop. As you grow to adolescence you learn there is a difference between fact and fiction. You learn that fact can be stranger than fiction and you learn that telling the truth (even though you learn there is no absolute truth because everything is relative) is important and telling lies can get you in some very hot water. Except that if you are a fiction writer, you spend your days writing lies. And that’s okay. You are ‘telling stories’ and stories are fundamentally not true. Or are they?
I’m not asking you to believe the story. But it’s not fiction to me. Though of course in one sense I am fictionalising it in the telling. For example you’ll note I use the narrative framing device favoured by Conrad in Heart of Darkness and Mary Shelley in Frankenstein to construct the ‘reality’ of the world in which I place this story. Because this story in one sense belongs to this ‘other world’ type of narrative. And yet, at the same time, there was a time when it was a present reality. I haven’t told this story in many years. Because it used to matter to me that I wouldn’t be believed. And I didn’t believe it was a story. Now I think the story may go beneath the surface and I want to explore that, which is why I’m telling it to you. I am exploring the ground between seeing and believing. In fact and/or fiction.
I have separated my ‘story’ into two levels but there are possibly many more. The ‘italics’ are the simple story. The rest is quite another story, a much more complex one which nevertheless impacts upon the simple story. It’s up to you what you believe. And so this becomes your story too. You take from it what you want. You add it to your belief system, you call it fact or fiction, truth or lies. And you will judge me based on what you believe I’m telling you. And it becomes our story. It becomes your story. I put my memory into the world and it runs free. It is no longer mine. It becomes public property.
I saw the Loch Ness Monster. No. I don’t believe it either. It was over forty years ago and life changes you, doesn’t it? It changes what you believe anyway. If pressed, now I’d say that I believe that I believed I saw the Loch Ness Monster. But that doesn’t seem to go far enough. I’m no longer sure I believe in the Loch Ness Monster for one thing. But I believe in myself as a five year old. I wasn’t making it up. I was being honest in what I saw. All I can do is tell you the story as I remember it now, with the added dimension of ‘memory’ thrown into the mix. And memory is not fact. Indeed perhaps all memory is a kind of fiction?
We went on holiday near Inverness when I was five. It was my first holiday. We went camping. This is camping circa 1968. A small caravan by the side of Loch Ness, in an isolated spot just down from Urquhart Castle. The caravan was small. Very small. Me and my brother slept at the end furthest from the door and had to climb over my parents to get out if we needed the toilet in the night. I have never been blessed with being able to spend a whole night far from a toilet so it was a particular trial for me. The toilet stood some way behind the caravan and was small, cramped and full of spiders. I didn’t like it. But I had to use it. Every night at least once. However much I tried to train myself to hold my bladder, I just couldn’t do it. Of course this was in the days before I knew that the famous scientist Tycho Brahe died of an exploded bladder. At least that’s what I believe to be true. He might have been experimenting like I was, wondering how long he could hold it. Fatal. I’ve learned my lesson. If I have to get up three times, I get up three times. But when I was five, I had more simple beliefs and realities to concern me than Tycho Brahe and his bladder. I just wanted to avoid the spiders and stop annoying my family by waking them up every night.
My mum didn’t seem to be enjoying the holiday. Which I thought was odd because I’d been looking forward to it ever since she took us out and bought us each three pairs of brand new jeans for the holiday. She must have known there would be no washing facilities. She knew her children. Me and my brother were runabout, climb trees, grubby little urchins. I’m not sure she had banked on the constant rain though. Yes, there we were on the picturesque banks of the Loch and it rained. Constantly. The best we had was a sort of smirry drizzle and the worst we had – the day we finally abandoned and went into Inverness to the cinema – was torrential.
I don’t remember the rain bothering us, but I imagine it must have been hell on earth for my mum.
We went to Inverness to see what there was to do. Not much. In Dundee, where we lived, when it rained we went down to the Docks to the amusement arcade and for twopence I could get a ride on Champion the Wonder Horse and my brother could get a ride in a model sports car. If we were smart we could both squeeze onto each others ride. But if they had amusements in Inverness, we didn’t find them. Instead, we went to the cinema. I liked the cinema. It was dark and warm and big. And it wasn’t a ‘usual’ experience. The film was in colour but heavily black and white – it was Thoroughly Modern Millie- a musical set in the twenties. It didn’t really hold my attention. My brother and dad hated it. My mum was just pleased to be out of the caravan and out of the rain. We were a family. That was important to me. We were sharing our lives.
Now I’m wondering if it was 1967 instead of 1968. Research tells me that the film came out in 1967. I wonder if Inverness was advanced enough to get the film on its first theatrical release? I expect so. So already, my story’s credibility starts to crumble. Okay, well I was either four or five and it was either 67 or 68 but it was wet the whole time we were there. Two kids under ten in a small caravan beside a loch. I’m sure all parents everywhere are shuddering at the thought. Remember this is in the days when largely one had to make one’s own entertainment. No CDs or DVD players. No portable TV’s. We may have had some board games, Mousey Mousey was a particular family favourite, but the caravan was so small I can’t imagine how we all four sat in there and played games in comfort. There’s a thing. You know when you go back to places you were as a child you usually think ‘how small it is’ compared to what you thought then. Well, if I’m thinking it was small then… we are not talking a static caravan, a mobile home or the like, we’re taking SMALL caravan.
For the rest of the sodden holiday, my dad tried to keep us amused by ‘spotting’ the Loch Ness Monster. We spent a lot of time looking out into the loch, sometimes paddling in it (not too far of course and only under supervision) and several sightings (when we were getting bored I suspect) were revealed as bits of rotting wood. I was a very gullible child, also strangely biddable if given a task to do. And I had great powers of concentration – even when essentially doing nothing. For example, back home I would hide under the sofa for ages ‘being a cat called Rosy Possum’ and in later years I would lie at the top of the stairs for hours being ‘Ginger’ after he’d been killed in our games of Biggles, while my brother and his pal went off outside doing more exciting things. I never deserted my post. I was the most convincing dead body you would ever see. And my dad obviously knew of these skills because he set me the task of looking out for the Loch Ness Monster. So I did. For hours. At least it felt like hours. But I didn’t see it.
Until…
My memory (which we’ve already agreed will be less than perfect and possibly more fiction than fact) suggests this was the last morning of the holiday, and certainly a narrative creation would require this to be the dénouement stage, so we’ll go with it. After all, credibility is stretched to the limit here anyway now, isn’t it?
I’d managed a full night without a trip to the toilet. It was very early in the morning, just after dawn, which makes it about four o’clock that time of year in that part of Scotland. And I couldn’t wait any longer. I needed the toilet. I clambered out over my sleeping brother, mum and dad. It must have been nearly the end of the holiday because being quiet enough not to wake them was a skill I nearly perfected during the holiday, and they didn’t stir. I went to the toilet. Relieved, I was on my way back to the caravan, when I looked out to the Loch. I saw something. It was like the classic 1933 picture of the Loch Ness Monster, head and couple of hoops out of the water. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I remember standing there thinking; ‘No one will believe me. I am looking at the Loch Ness Monster and no one will believe me.’ I stood for a while – quite a while – wondering what to do. Then I realised that I needed to take a picture of it. I didn’t know how to use a camera, but I knew we had one in the caravan, so I decided to go in, get my dad’s camera and come back out and take a picture of it. I’d figure out the details when I got the camera in my hands. So that’s what I did. Only of course by the time I got back out of the caravan (having woken up my family, to their displeasure) it had gone. And of course no one believed me. But I knew that I’d seen it. I saw the Loch Ness Monster.
What I cannot remember clearly is when I first went to the Loch Ness Monster museum in Invermoriston. Was it before or after my sighting? Because that might be significant. Implanted false memory syndrome? Of course there are plenty of other people who have ‘seen’ the Monster. There is evidence either way. It’s not the sort of thing I would normally give credence to. If I hadn’t seen it for myself. It stands in defiance of my rational being. I don’t believe in ghosts, the other world, UFO’s or any of that stuff. So how can I believe in the Loch Ness Monster? I can’t. But what can I do? Say that I was a suggestible child who thought they saw something because they’d been primed to see it? I know myself better than that. That ‘story’ doesn’t convince me any better than the sighting, though I’d like to. I know it’s a ‘story’.
The thing is, I have this memory, which is more than a memory. I can see myself there. I believe it. The ‘moment’ is as real to me today as anything else in my life (and more so than many things I know happened for ‘real’.) There I am, the young me, seeing the Loch Ness Monster and held in the grip of the knowledge that no one would believe me without proof. And that I was unable to provide proof. It was an issue I wrestled with for a long time. Long enough to get cold out there in my pyjamas. So in some way, whether Nessie does exist or not, I saw him/her/it. Nessie is part of my life ‘story’ and we are as Sabin points out ‘storied beings’. Why me? Why this story? These are questions I can’t answer. All I know is that however much I try to convince myself I don’t believe in the Loch Ness Monster, I still know I’ve seen it. Or believe that I saw it. Which may be why seeing, believing and memories are so important to me in life. They make up ‘reality’ for me.
I have very few memories of my dad. By the time I was seven my parents had divorced and I have seen him only twice in the last forty years. My memories of him are both less and more real than of the Loch Ness Monster. And for this story I’ve just told you, they come together as fictional characters and happy memories. Does there need to be more explanation?
Swearwords: None.
Description: When fact and fiction become blurred in the mists of time.
_____________________________________________________________________
When you are four or five you know that seeing is believing. You believe that the camera can’t lie. Or you did in the days before Photoshop. As you grow to adolescence you learn there is a difference between fact and fiction. You learn that fact can be stranger than fiction and you learn that telling the truth (even though you learn there is no absolute truth because everything is relative) is important and telling lies can get you in some very hot water. Except that if you are a fiction writer, you spend your days writing lies. And that’s okay. You are ‘telling stories’ and stories are fundamentally not true. Or are they?
I’m not asking you to believe the story. But it’s not fiction to me. Though of course in one sense I am fictionalising it in the telling. For example you’ll note I use the narrative framing device favoured by Conrad in Heart of Darkness and Mary Shelley in Frankenstein to construct the ‘reality’ of the world in which I place this story. Because this story in one sense belongs to this ‘other world’ type of narrative. And yet, at the same time, there was a time when it was a present reality. I haven’t told this story in many years. Because it used to matter to me that I wouldn’t be believed. And I didn’t believe it was a story. Now I think the story may go beneath the surface and I want to explore that, which is why I’m telling it to you. I am exploring the ground between seeing and believing. In fact and/or fiction.
I have separated my ‘story’ into two levels but there are possibly many more. The ‘italics’ are the simple story. The rest is quite another story, a much more complex one which nevertheless impacts upon the simple story. It’s up to you what you believe. And so this becomes your story too. You take from it what you want. You add it to your belief system, you call it fact or fiction, truth or lies. And you will judge me based on what you believe I’m telling you. And it becomes our story. It becomes your story. I put my memory into the world and it runs free. It is no longer mine. It becomes public property.
I saw the Loch Ness Monster. No. I don’t believe it either. It was over forty years ago and life changes you, doesn’t it? It changes what you believe anyway. If pressed, now I’d say that I believe that I believed I saw the Loch Ness Monster. But that doesn’t seem to go far enough. I’m no longer sure I believe in the Loch Ness Monster for one thing. But I believe in myself as a five year old. I wasn’t making it up. I was being honest in what I saw. All I can do is tell you the story as I remember it now, with the added dimension of ‘memory’ thrown into the mix. And memory is not fact. Indeed perhaps all memory is a kind of fiction?
We went on holiday near Inverness when I was five. It was my first holiday. We went camping. This is camping circa 1968. A small caravan by the side of Loch Ness, in an isolated spot just down from Urquhart Castle. The caravan was small. Very small. Me and my brother slept at the end furthest from the door and had to climb over my parents to get out if we needed the toilet in the night. I have never been blessed with being able to spend a whole night far from a toilet so it was a particular trial for me. The toilet stood some way behind the caravan and was small, cramped and full of spiders. I didn’t like it. But I had to use it. Every night at least once. However much I tried to train myself to hold my bladder, I just couldn’t do it. Of course this was in the days before I knew that the famous scientist Tycho Brahe died of an exploded bladder. At least that’s what I believe to be true. He might have been experimenting like I was, wondering how long he could hold it. Fatal. I’ve learned my lesson. If I have to get up three times, I get up three times. But when I was five, I had more simple beliefs and realities to concern me than Tycho Brahe and his bladder. I just wanted to avoid the spiders and stop annoying my family by waking them up every night.
My mum didn’t seem to be enjoying the holiday. Which I thought was odd because I’d been looking forward to it ever since she took us out and bought us each three pairs of brand new jeans for the holiday. She must have known there would be no washing facilities. She knew her children. Me and my brother were runabout, climb trees, grubby little urchins. I’m not sure she had banked on the constant rain though. Yes, there we were on the picturesque banks of the Loch and it rained. Constantly. The best we had was a sort of smirry drizzle and the worst we had – the day we finally abandoned and went into Inverness to the cinema – was torrential.
I don’t remember the rain bothering us, but I imagine it must have been hell on earth for my mum.
We went to Inverness to see what there was to do. Not much. In Dundee, where we lived, when it rained we went down to the Docks to the amusement arcade and for twopence I could get a ride on Champion the Wonder Horse and my brother could get a ride in a model sports car. If we were smart we could both squeeze onto each others ride. But if they had amusements in Inverness, we didn’t find them. Instead, we went to the cinema. I liked the cinema. It was dark and warm and big. And it wasn’t a ‘usual’ experience. The film was in colour but heavily black and white – it was Thoroughly Modern Millie- a musical set in the twenties. It didn’t really hold my attention. My brother and dad hated it. My mum was just pleased to be out of the caravan and out of the rain. We were a family. That was important to me. We were sharing our lives.
Now I’m wondering if it was 1967 instead of 1968. Research tells me that the film came out in 1967. I wonder if Inverness was advanced enough to get the film on its first theatrical release? I expect so. So already, my story’s credibility starts to crumble. Okay, well I was either four or five and it was either 67 or 68 but it was wet the whole time we were there. Two kids under ten in a small caravan beside a loch. I’m sure all parents everywhere are shuddering at the thought. Remember this is in the days when largely one had to make one’s own entertainment. No CDs or DVD players. No portable TV’s. We may have had some board games, Mousey Mousey was a particular family favourite, but the caravan was so small I can’t imagine how we all four sat in there and played games in comfort. There’s a thing. You know when you go back to places you were as a child you usually think ‘how small it is’ compared to what you thought then. Well, if I’m thinking it was small then… we are not talking a static caravan, a mobile home or the like, we’re taking SMALL caravan.
For the rest of the sodden holiday, my dad tried to keep us amused by ‘spotting’ the Loch Ness Monster. We spent a lot of time looking out into the loch, sometimes paddling in it (not too far of course and only under supervision) and several sightings (when we were getting bored I suspect) were revealed as bits of rotting wood. I was a very gullible child, also strangely biddable if given a task to do. And I had great powers of concentration – even when essentially doing nothing. For example, back home I would hide under the sofa for ages ‘being a cat called Rosy Possum’ and in later years I would lie at the top of the stairs for hours being ‘Ginger’ after he’d been killed in our games of Biggles, while my brother and his pal went off outside doing more exciting things. I never deserted my post. I was the most convincing dead body you would ever see. And my dad obviously knew of these skills because he set me the task of looking out for the Loch Ness Monster. So I did. For hours. At least it felt like hours. But I didn’t see it.
Until…
My memory (which we’ve already agreed will be less than perfect and possibly more fiction than fact) suggests this was the last morning of the holiday, and certainly a narrative creation would require this to be the dénouement stage, so we’ll go with it. After all, credibility is stretched to the limit here anyway now, isn’t it?
I’d managed a full night without a trip to the toilet. It was very early in the morning, just after dawn, which makes it about four o’clock that time of year in that part of Scotland. And I couldn’t wait any longer. I needed the toilet. I clambered out over my sleeping brother, mum and dad. It must have been nearly the end of the holiday because being quiet enough not to wake them was a skill I nearly perfected during the holiday, and they didn’t stir. I went to the toilet. Relieved, I was on my way back to the caravan, when I looked out to the Loch. I saw something. It was like the classic 1933 picture of the Loch Ness Monster, head and couple of hoops out of the water. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I remember standing there thinking; ‘No one will believe me. I am looking at the Loch Ness Monster and no one will believe me.’ I stood for a while – quite a while – wondering what to do. Then I realised that I needed to take a picture of it. I didn’t know how to use a camera, but I knew we had one in the caravan, so I decided to go in, get my dad’s camera and come back out and take a picture of it. I’d figure out the details when I got the camera in my hands. So that’s what I did. Only of course by the time I got back out of the caravan (having woken up my family, to their displeasure) it had gone. And of course no one believed me. But I knew that I’d seen it. I saw the Loch Ness Monster.
What I cannot remember clearly is when I first went to the Loch Ness Monster museum in Invermoriston. Was it before or after my sighting? Because that might be significant. Implanted false memory syndrome? Of course there are plenty of other people who have ‘seen’ the Monster. There is evidence either way. It’s not the sort of thing I would normally give credence to. If I hadn’t seen it for myself. It stands in defiance of my rational being. I don’t believe in ghosts, the other world, UFO’s or any of that stuff. So how can I believe in the Loch Ness Monster? I can’t. But what can I do? Say that I was a suggestible child who thought they saw something because they’d been primed to see it? I know myself better than that. That ‘story’ doesn’t convince me any better than the sighting, though I’d like to. I know it’s a ‘story’.
The thing is, I have this memory, which is more than a memory. I can see myself there. I believe it. The ‘moment’ is as real to me today as anything else in my life (and more so than many things I know happened for ‘real’.) There I am, the young me, seeing the Loch Ness Monster and held in the grip of the knowledge that no one would believe me without proof. And that I was unable to provide proof. It was an issue I wrestled with for a long time. Long enough to get cold out there in my pyjamas. So in some way, whether Nessie does exist or not, I saw him/her/it. Nessie is part of my life ‘story’ and we are as Sabin points out ‘storied beings’. Why me? Why this story? These are questions I can’t answer. All I know is that however much I try to convince myself I don’t believe in the Loch Ness Monster, I still know I’ve seen it. Or believe that I saw it. Which may be why seeing, believing and memories are so important to me in life. They make up ‘reality’ for me.
I have very few memories of my dad. By the time I was seven my parents had divorced and I have seen him only twice in the last forty years. My memories of him are both less and more real than of the Loch Ness Monster. And for this story I’ve just told you, they come together as fictional characters and happy memories. Does there need to be more explanation?
About the Author
Kirsty Eccles was born and brought up in Dundee. She worked for more years than she cares to remember in financial services before switching to something less lucrative but more fulfilling – a career in advocacy services. Her debut short stories Girls and Boys Come Out to Play and The Price of Fame (now available as an ebook) were published by Guerrilla Midgie Press, and she now
works with the advocacy publisher full-time on creative advocacy projects.