Swing Hammer Swing!

by Jeff Torrington

  Follow that, Mr Clay!

  ‘Tom.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tom, I wish things could be . . . well, you know – normal.’

  Of course I knew what she meant. Knew only too well. Yet despite myself, there was my bowtie becoming luminous, beginning to twirl and, in my buttonhole, the plastic carnation was readying itself to squirt comic acid. ‘There’s a lot of static on the line,’ I said. ‘What’s “normal”?’

  ‘You know – regular.’ Her voice dropped. ‘See that lassie over there?’

  ‘Minnie-Ha-Ha, you mean?’

  ‘Shhh, she’ll hear you.’ Rhona moved closer to me so that her mouth was almost touching my ear. ‘She’s having her own house built in Bishopbriggs.’

  ‘Is that the lum she’s got stuck up’r goonie, then?’

  She became huffy again. ‘No use talking to you.’

  A new tactic: the clown inverts his gaudy mouth; tears pulse from dry eyes; a tale of great personal sacrifice he would unfold, of how, that very afternoon he’d cashed in his tipper-tapper, a castastrophe on the scale of Rudolph Nury-what’s-it surrendering his legs to a surgeon.

  ‘But why? Surely you weren’t that stuck that you’d to . . .’

  ‘It was an auld machine, Rhona – knackered.’

  ‘What’d you need the money for?’

  ‘Well, there’s yon joker that comes doon the lum for a start.’

  ‘I’m in a Club for young Jason, remember?’

  ‘Too right! The Stork Club – membership expanding!’

  She seemed in much better fettle now. An old joke between us surfaced.

  ‘Tom, don’t go daft and get me that flank musquash coat you promised me ages ago.’

  ‘I’ve my eyes on something even better,’ I said. ‘I’ve put down a deposit on a new cord for your iron. How about that?’

  Her soaring spirits were plain to see. The fact that I’d dumped my typewriter had restored buoyancy to her dream balloon. Already she was airborne. By the time the visiting period was over she was all but out of sight, and I was little more than a humble dung-beetle nosing its ball of spittle and planetary dust up that mythical slope called the future . . .

  10

  THE PLANET PICTURE House was, in reality, a big dud neon sign with a bit of crumbling cinema attached to it. Old folks out for a wee daunder might, through force of habit, find themselves wandering into this kinematic museum to watch the breakdowns and odd snippets of film. During the forties someone had hurled a dagger through the screen and the rough repair work had resulted in a big L-shaped scar that flawed the close-ups of such modern stars as Don Ameche and Alice Faye. The Planet was well into its last reel of existence, a fact mourned by its faithful patrons as they sat at home glued to their TV sets.

  ‘Hurry up, Tam – the fleas are hungry!’ shouted Big Snowy Callaghan, the doorman-cum-bouncer, as I came into the vestibule. He was a huge punter with a mane of white hair and a face he’d charitably donated to most of the city’s infirmaries for needlework practice. Snowy was proud of his scars and when drunk he’d give you a conducted tour of them. ‘This long wan here’s Tam Padden’s work – could fairly handle a malky, yon bastard. Big Durkin fae the Toonheid gave me this twelve-stitcher but you should’ve seen his coupon – butcher’s windae stuff. This fella was done wae a sheath-knife, Billy Higgins fae the Calton. He was found wae the point of an anchor up his arse in the KGV back’n the fifties.’

  ‘Lo, Snowy,’ I said, pausing by him, ‘how’s business?’

  Folding the Evening Citizen he’d been reading, he jerked a thumb towards the pile of coins old Maude, the cashier, had accumulated. ‘Soon have enough to post a letter. That right, Maude?’ Knitting what might be a balaclava for one of the boys on the Somme, she didn’t answer. Maude’s age was legendary. Whenever folk started to conjecture what it might be, the expression, ‘She was here long afore the angels’, was bound to be heard. This meant that she predated the angels which during the Planet’s one and only refurbishment had been painted on the auditorium’s ceiling by a man called Seamus O’Toole. O’Toole’s efforts to emulate Michaelangelo had, alas, fallen far short of the mark: his sun, moon and stars weren’t all that bad but his angels were diabolical – a hard jawed squadron with muscles like stevedores who wielded harps that looked like swatches of railings that’d been swiped from Scobie Street backcourts during the war. The angels were still up there but years of smoke had done for them and a thick coat of nicotine gunge now mercifully concealed their bolloxed artistry. As for O’Toole, who’d risked life and limb to perform his sub-Sistine miracle, he’d been killed in a freak accident in a cheese store when a wheel of the finest yellow fell on him from a height. Hard Cheddar, as the expression has it.

  I chaffed to Snowy for a few minutes, mainly about the cuddies, then I went upstairs, heading for the operating box. On my way there I bumped into Nessie Maxwell, who was burdened in life by an alcoholic husband and, at present, by a trayful of ice-cream tubs, crisps, nuts, drinks and popcorn. (It was rumoured that Paddy Cullen got his nuts from her for nothing but the fat man vigorously denied this.)

  ‘Bloody Eskimo pictures,’ Nessie grumbled. ‘Fat chance I’ve got of selling ice-cream!’

  ‘Cheer up, Nessie,’ I said, ‘we’re due any day now for the return of Bogie in Sahara.’

  ‘Well, he’d better come on a fast camel or he’ll find the door bolted,’ Nessie said as she tottered off towards the balcony to see if any punters were to be found on its frozen slope.

  The lounge had definitely fallen on hard times. On one famous occasion a chunk of its ceiling had fallen and nearly brained a wee rogue from Devon Street while he was hacking a generous swatch from the treasured Templeton carpet with a lino knife, ‘Jist for a wee souvenir,’ as he’d explained to the sheriff. This much admired tapis was now but a shadow of its former glory; in recent times it’d taken to weaving for itself a manic-looking fungal design, an activity which you could feel nibbling at the soles of your shoes if you stood overlong on any one spot. It had to be conceded that a heavy dose of sledgehammering was just what the place needed. Depressing it was to see the old bumweary couches mouldering in dark corners, a stench of finito plagued the nostrils; let’s face it, there’re fewer smells more poignant than the stink of plush going to pot.

  I went through a doorway on the brow of which the title ‘Manager’ had been perfunctorily stencilled. A duplicate green painted door at my elbow repeated the title but this time it was inscribed in the loops and swoops of the signwriter’s art. What was happening behind the green door? Not much, seemingly for Burnett was making with the heavy zees. Holding down two jobs was proving tiring for him for since the sudden passing of Rinty O’Dowd, he’d been functioning in the dual role of Proprietor/Manager. With the Hammer all but poised over the Planet’s roof there seemed little point in hiring a replacement for O’Dowd – not that such a person was likely to be found anyway. O’Dowd had been a one-off; a showbiz manqué who’d done a stint ‘on the boards’ in his youth, he could always be depended upon to keep a queue from wearying with his impersonations, tap-dancing and comic patter. He’d made his exit in fine style. ‘Aye,’ says Freddy Greene, ‘he gets his usual fistful of Islay Mist, gives a shuffle – you know, yon fankly thing he’d do wae his legs – raises his glass, says “Cirrhosis”, cocks his heid yon wey of his, then puts ower a gubful. It couldna’ve got past his tonsils before his heid hit the sawdust . . .’

  Apart from seeing to the nightly receipts – this didn’t take long – or, when needed, supplying batteries or bulbs for the three or four usherettes, Burnett had sometimes to supervise the ejection of difficult patrons, usually drunks who’d got entangled in the horror movies unwinding inside their booze-blitzed heads. Big Snowy, of course, would be on hand to see to the physical side of the ejections as he would later when the show was over and he and Matt Lucas would scour the auditorium to winkle out the odd dosser who, now’n again, would try to hide himself in order t
o extend his stay into a warm night’s kip. It was also routine to check out the toilets in case somebody was sitting stone dead on one of the pans, his breath having been taken away by the fumes from the disinfectant cubes as they sizzled violently in orange pools of piss. Burnett’s sister came for him each evening in her car, a wee Morris Minor, and drove him back to their home in Burnside. Not once had I ever seen her set foot in her brother’s pictorial pesthole.

  On the yellow door in the corner somebody – probably Cullen – had daubed ‘Apehouse this way!’ in choppy green letters. I pushed it open and began the tough climb up the dusty flights of stairs. The Planet’s op-box was so primitive Edison would’ve condemned it: two vintage Ross projectors and a slide-lantern took up most of its available room. These antique kinema relics were juiced by electrical junk so out of date that it moistened the eyes of the greybeard who very infrequently dropped by to perform routine servicing. Adjoining the box was a claustrophobic spoolroom so cramped for space it was possible to get a high from the film cement.

  Matt Lucas smiled at me as I came into the box. He was crouched by the take-up reel of number two machine, tucking in a film tail. ‘Hullo, Tommy – it’s yourself. Still snowing ootside?’

  ‘No as heavy as in here,’ I said and stepped across to the monitor to tone down the sound of a raging blizzard. ‘How’d the diving trip go, then?’ I asked.

  He pulled a face. ‘Flippin hopeless. A gang of tearaways tanked me wae snowballs in Bedford Street, must’ve been twenty of them, at least. Went doon on ma bahookie, so I did. Soaked right through.’

  ‘You were daft tae dae it in the first place.’

  ‘Ach, it’s always another dollar towards the wife’s anniversary pressy.’

  ‘S’that all the bugger gave you – five bob?’ I shook my head. ‘Don’t suppose he went the distance, did he?’

  ‘Mr Burnett, you mean?’ He shook his head. ‘Slipped off into the Granite Bar, to phone his sister, he said.’

  ‘Is he back on the bendy juice again?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  Something in the corner, near the record player, caught my eye. I grinned: there, sprawled in the battered armchair in glorious bevvycolour, was the magnificent sight of Paddy Cullen, second-class operator and first-class drunk. He looked well gone, down there with his winklepickers dancing on the hobs of Hell. It was long odds against his surfacing before the Anthem was rattling through the sprockets. I replaced the Evening Times which’d half-slid from his sweaty face. ‘Hellish, is it no, what you find in the papers these days?’

  Lucas closed the lower spoolbox door then crossed to the monitor to fade further the grunts that passed for Hollywood Eskimo. He returned to the resting projector and swung up its arc-chamber door. As he set about replacing the burnt-out carbons he glanced through a porthole at the screen. ‘Wish I’d a harpoon,’ he said. ‘I’d know where to stick it.’

  ‘How aboot a snawba doon his neck?’

  Lucas gave his head a disgusted-looking shake. He was a frayed wee man with a severe squint and a shimmer of panic about’m that suggested he’d make a fertile breeding ground for stomach ulcers. ‘A stick of gelly widnae shift’m.’ Lucas hurried round to the running projector to adjust its carbons. ‘I’ve had to run the show myself tonight. No playing the game. Know what he done on the first run?’

  ‘Crashed the carbons, maybe? Missed a change-over?’

  ‘C’mon Tommy, that’s par for the course. I’ll tell you what he did – stuck parts three and four of the wrang film on, that’s what. One minute it’s your posse chasing the baddy, the next, it’s a polar bear biting the bum off an Eskimo. That’s no it finished. When Maisie Templar phones’m up to tell’m (I was stoking the furnace at the time) what does the brainless bampot go’n do? You’ve guessed it – sticks five and six of the Eskimo film on. Blooming mess!’

  Me, I found the whole thing hilarious. ‘Think about it Matt – the possibilities. A whole new seam: The Sheriff of Kayak Creek, starring Husky Mush and Aurora Borealis! Or, how aboot, The Snawba Fight at the O.K. Coracle?’

  ‘I’d prefer a winos’ ward starring him,’ Lucas said, then immediately fed his own addiction by popping a Mint Imperial into his gob, which he then began to rattle zestfully around his wallies. A chain-sooker, that’s what he was. I settled into the creaking basketchair by the radiator and reached for my pack of cigs. Lucas adjusted the mirror on the running machine, a practice more habitual than effective for the Eskimos were fighting a losing battle with Burnett’s flawed screen, most of them floundering from sight into its dusty crevices; the scar left by that long-ago flung dagger marked out one of the Arctic’s finest for an early death when it appeared like a flash of black lightning, zig-zagging across his brow in close-up. Cullen continued to give his impression of a Harley-Davidson Special doing the ton on a gravel beach.

  ‘Time he got a grip on himself,’ Lucas grumbled. ‘Think’s sobriety’s an illness. Okay, we all like a wee snifter now’n again but he’s always got to go over the score.’

  I nodded. ‘A hollow leg oor Paddy has.’ I glanced at Lucas. ‘Away across and have a quicky yoursel, wee man – I’ll mind the shop.’

  ‘Thanks, Tommy, you’re a champ. After the change-over then.’ He glanced through the window of the top spoolbox. ‘Only a couple of minutes left.’

  With the change-over completed Lucas stuck on his coat’n bunnet and headed for the Dog. I trimmed the carbons, squeezing as much light as was possible from the flogged-out rear mirror, then I went through to the spoolroom with the loaded reel from the static projector. As I rewound it I accepted that the chance of a couple of jugs in the company of Paddy Cullen was no longer a runner. Just as well, maybe, for I’d need to keep some loot by for tomorrow. Skint on a Saturday – what could be worse than that? I’d nearly painted myself into a corner by hinting to Rhona that she might be onto something special this xmas. A flank musquash for chrissake! Some hopes. Aye, it was all right for they Eskies – fur-coats came chapping on their doors at midnight. A tough life just the same, for when you got auld and your teeth started to fall out (around twenty-five on average) the Midnight Sun mob papped you out on the tundra for bear-bait, no messing. I slotted the rewound reel into the film cabinet and withdrew the next one in sequence. While I was doing this I got to puzzling over the Zebra-bunneted merchant who’d been doing his nosey about me. Hard to figure who he might’ve been. In addition there was the London Times in my stairhead closet. ‘Don’t forget the snowballs,’ Jeremiah put in. I grinned. ‘No Balls in the Dark’ – a good title for a number on the Eunuch’s Hit-Parade.

  When I got back into the op-box with another reel of Arctic hokum a surprise jolted me; a real, live non-celluloid chick was standing at the running projector, gaping at it with such an awed expression you would’ve thought it was an example of newly-minted technology instead of a crap bundle of light and sprockets. She’d the face of an angel – one of the fallen variety. I figured her to be in the 22/25 bracket though sans underpinning she might overflow 25. Her pancake fakeup had been trowled on so thickly it made Dusty Springfield’s lavishness in the same area look positively nunnish. You could almost feel the draught from her sooty eyelashes, a startling contrast to her bottle blonde hair which, stiff with lacquer, looked as if its beehive style had been lowered onto her head by crane and welded into place. A blue nylon coat overall was half-buttoned over her red woollen nearly-dress and she wore sandals of the same colour. Her lips which I’ve deliberately left until last (just as women do when they’re chucking on their warpaint) were fascinatingly repellent, corpse-white, of course, in deference to the anti-natural look which the face-graffiti gurus were telling daft wee lassies was absolutely de rigueur this season. De-whut? Never you mind about that, hen, just splodge it on. D’you maybe want a shot of my grease-gun?

  As the door thumped shut behind me her glance darted in my direction. Because of the layers of cosmetic gunk it was hard to figure what initial impact I was having on her
but I took the fluttering eyelids to be a favourable sign. ‘Hullo,’ she said, and her voice had a nice warm core to it, ‘I was just having a look.’

  ‘Be my guest.’ I presented my face in profile. ‘They tell me this is my best side.’

  She smiled. ‘No I meant . . .’ She hesitated. ‘I’ve never been in a projection booth before.’

  ‘Projection booth, eh?’ I loaded the reel into its spoolbox then hurried around to the running machine and tightened the gap between the carbons – night suddenly becoming day would baffle the few patrons who might still be down there. I tried without success to sharpen the focus on an Eskimo who was gnawing at something – a seal’s asshole, maybe.

  ‘It’s smaller’n I expected,’ she said, an observation which MacDougall had been on the point of responding to when I cut in with: ‘Aye, it’s as tight as a herring’s face,’ which was one of Da Clay’s daft expressions, one that always made me chuckle – God knows why. It seemed to have the same effect on the dolly-bird for her smile blossomed into a silky sort of laugh, a sound to treasure as the monitor continued to spit out gelid chunks of Eskimoese.

  I returned to the static machine and began to lace the film leader through the machine’s sprockets. She watched as I made the necessary loops. Jeezuz – that dress of hers! ‘I just thought I’d come up for a wee peep,’ she explained. ‘Couldn’t believe it when I found the place running itself.’

  Squinting into the gate I ran some film through the projector. As I swung the lens down into position I nodded in the direction of the snoring Cullen. ‘You’ll have met twinkletoes?’