Swing Hammer Swing!

by Jeff Torrington

  I sank into my armchair with some fresh cuts of bread and another bowl of so-called broth. When I’d finished my scoff I turned the socks I’d left to dry over on the fender then settled back for some shut-eye. I’d this weird wee dream; I saw myself on the stairs, going down to the haunted cludgie. Pushing its door wide I was confronted by a full suit of armour arranged in a sitting position on the pan. I began to footer with its visor and eventually it sprang open. It seemed to be empty, the suit, but couldn’t have been for something inside was on fire. Smoke began to pour from the casque and soon the suit got so heated it began to glow brazier red. It would’ve all been very symbolic, a meaty diagnostical bone for any Freudian fart to’ve had a good gnaw on: Herr Clay, I haf to inform you that your psyche is for der Kibosh!’ if I hadn’t wakened to find that my socks were on the point of incinerating themselves. I stuck them on, enjoying their scorching contact.

  I stared across at the dumb TV in the corner. It was having a nightmare called Vietnam; kids being napalmed; eggshell villages being stomped upon by GI Joe’s converging mortar rounds. Before the mind could assimilate what the Pentagon’s real intentions for that woebegone land were, we were whisked away to view some xmassy schmaltz in Trafalgar Square. And just to ensure that no memory vestige of human carnage remained, we went off now on a zoo trip. A beaver flicked along a snowy tree limb then there followed some funny footage of a penguin skidding drunkenly around on some tundra: it looked a lot like wee Archie Killoch’s efforts to remain upright in the Dog this afternoon.

  I updated my journal, a broad sweep of the day’s events thus far, headlines which I’d amplify tomorrow with a bit more time. On flipping through the pages of one of my ‘Red Nerves’ jotters I came across a quote from Talky Sloan himself:

  ‘Freedom for the working class means that although you’re not going to get a bit of Granny’s dumpling, you’re completely at liberty to go without it . . .’

  Nice one, auld timer!

  20

  WHEN I WENT into the Maternity’s Day Room Val Doonican was on the box. A charming Irishman, he was by profession a kind of singing sedative which no doubt accounted for the state of collective narcosis being evidenced by his viewers. Wagging to’n fro in a rocking chair, he plucked soporific chords from his guitar, and the public yawn, touring the mouths available to it in the room – six of them now that I’d showed up – was fielded to me by a tallow-pale woman who sat close by Rhona. My jawbones crackled lightly as the yawn tautened them. All over Scotland punters would be fighting off waves of fatigue as they elbowed themselves across their living-room rugs to get at the TV channel selectors before it was too late and they were sucked into that psychic black hole, that snore-pocket from which they’d emerge to be confronted by the direst prospect on this or any other planet – the Scottish Sabbath.

  Rhona alas remained all too wakeful to the shortcomings in her life. Once again I got sandbagged for my scruffy appearance. ‘Think you’d been flung off the back of an army truck . . .’ Inevitably my long hair got short shrift. When had my shoes last seen a brush? And why had I brought chocolates? A whole quarter pound too – my my, it’d be miniatures of Lucozade next. Disdainfully she’d pushed away the choc-box.

  ‘But they’re brandy liqueurs – your favourite.’

  ‘Is that where the smell of booze is coming from then?’

  ‘Only had the one, Rhona.’

  ‘I thought I asked you to change my magazine.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘All you get in this rag’s Liz Taylor and how to detect cancer.’

  ‘Sure, how I gotta knowma carcinoma.’

  ‘Shut up!’

  Next came the ever-recurring wrangle about the Futility Furnishings payment book. ‘Beautility,’ she snapped. ‘Why’ve you always got to give things such childish nicknames?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, Fat Wallet for –’

  ‘The Nat Smollett Estate. I like that, it’s apt and it’s –’

  ‘Stupid. Time you grew up.’

  Aye, once again I’d forgotten to bring the never-never book. I was hiding something. She knew me all too well. Could pick up a lie before it tripped over my lips. What was I up to? Might as well tell her. She’d find out in the end. I better not be lying about contacting the Gas Board to have the meter emptied. Did I want one of those Salty Dog low-lifers to do the job for me? I protested that she’d no right to call my fellow-drinkers ‘low-lifers’. She nodded, ‘Maybe I am being hard on them. Your real low-lifer would be someone content to sit and sup tea in a public lavatory.’ I’d told her the anecdote about Death having called at the Bum Boutique and it had gone down a treat – quicker even than the Titanic.

  All in all this visit was proving to be as about as relaxing as had been my ascent in yon creaking coffin they call a lift. ‘Okay, folks, this floor for grouses, groans, and girns. Don’t forget to visit our sob-spot for a right good greet. Next floor, complaints, censures, beefs and bellyaches . . . Stand clear of the gates, please. Sonny, keep your dabs off this here emergency button.’

  The bell rang and I rose to my feet as if I was scared they’d change their mind and declare an extension to our visit. Rhona had been in the middle of something really interesting and was now shrewedly observing that ‘houses won’t get off their bricks and walk to you – you’ve got to go and – ‘Damn, that bell, just when I’d been starting to get into things. Around me the good Scottish husbands had risen to their feet too, and were to be seen planting sedate Scottish (who’s looking?) kisses on their respective spouses’ cheeks. My attempt to join the pecking order had been restrained by an upheld hand. ‘Don’t,’ she hissed, ‘your breath would melt iron!’

  21

  ON THE TRAIL of Mooney while his spoor remained fresh, I checked out the Salty Dog’s lounge where he was known to knock back a noggin or two before getting down to some serious boozing along in Oatlands. The joke about the lounge – it’d been nicknamed ‘The Kennel’ – was that it’d once been a thieves’ kitchen until the thieves complained to the Sanitary Dept about the conditions in which they were expected to plot crimes. Many famous personalities had passed out in The Kennel, Benny Lynch surprisingly enough not being one of them, although every galoot who stuck a few bottles on a shelf and called himself a Gorbals Publican usually claimed that the pawky wee pugilist had been one of their own: ‘Och aye, many a time your man gave us his crack, standing in the selfsame spot you’re filling now, sir . . .’ A punter wandering back from the forties would scarcely recognise the place, what with the fancy lighting (bulbs with shades noo, be jeez!) and, on the floor, waxcloth your feet just sank into; the walls looked much the same – like they’d been sprayed with liquid horseshit; the ‘oak’ beams would’ve been a novelty mind you, as would the service-hatch extension – it had formerly been a mere slit in the wall, hardly wider than Dan McGarvie’s pay-out window. The coal fire’d been replaced by a pair of smoky paraffin heaters which excited so much coughing among the customers the place sounded like a TB ward. The coal fire, by the way, was at the centre of one of the Dog’s renowned tales, for it’d been the very one into which Gimpy Lawson’s gammy leg was tossed by Dykes Deacon, a Toonheid hardman. As the leg burned Deacon is said to’ve growled after the panicking Gimpy who was hopping for his life to the door: ‘That’s jist for starters, ya bastard – I’ll be back for the rest of ye later!’

  I drew a blank in the Kennel: Mooney wasn’t there, nor had he been seen earlier. Hatchet Hannah and Chibber Freeland were present though, and making it known by their singing of a raucous ditty which Freddy Green was doing his best to shush since the song drew its inspiration from Harry Moffat’s spinal protuberance:

  Where did Harry get his hump?

  Where did Harry get his hump?

  Was it oan the Govan Ferry

  Fae a Dublin dromedary?

  Aye, that’s where Harry

  Got his hump.

  From a murky corner, cave-dark, where fags flared th
en faded and furtive eyes blinked on and off, the stupendously ugly kisser of Jake Mannion darted forth to put the bite on me. His tactics rarely varied and hard listening was called for or you’d miss the pitch. First the handshake, accompanied by a Masonic rigmarole of knuckle tweaking and palm sliding; this followed by an overt try at reducing your mitt to pulped bone, this pressure intended to convey the hearty honesty of the man. Next the patter: ‘Tammy Clay – son of Shiny Shoes, the man who broke the bank of Jake McGarvie, lend us a quid.’

  I gave’m the ‘I’m skint’ sign which is mainly done with a slow lift of the shoulders and a rueful expression. The handgrip increased but I managed to wrest my mitt free. He diverted his annoyance by plucking the bunnet from Keith Kinsale’s bald napper and chucking it across the lounge. It cuffed auld Ned Sheldrake’s empty tumbler from the table and sent it crashing to the floor. Ned, who until then had been peaceably lost in the smoky dream of his pipe flared up like a mini-volcano, scattering ashes and sparks as he shouted across. ‘Ya silly fucker, ye.’ Mannion gave’m the finger then began to use Kinsale’s head for a bongo drum, slapping his hands on it, and none too lightly at that. Kinsale, who was obviously stoned out of his gourd, merely smirked at the maltreatment and simpered, ‘See, there y’are. Telt ye it wid turn tae rain . . .’

  I went through to the bar. It was plunging and pitching like a runaway roller-coaster. Wall-to-wall bedlam. Paddy Cullen was there, sat at the doms table and looking cracking in his deepsea diver’s suit, with a bottle of stout cooling in the snow-filled helmet at his feet. ‘Hey, Tam,’ he shouted, ‘draw up a body and sit doon.’ He gave me a wave and seemed surprised when the three of us waved back. No sign of Mooney. In the lavvy there was this punter leaning his back against the tiles while water dripped from an overhead cistern onto his turnip. He peered at me through slitted eyes. ‘Lo, son. Helluva night, eh? Nae sign of that bloody bus yet?’

  Back in the bar’s uproar I put the message out for Mooney’s home address. Leave it to the Sooside Mafioso: before I’d time to sink a pint, back came the FOUR places he was definitely staying at. A harder one this time: what was his favourite Saturday-night watering hole? In no time at all I’d the choice of half a dozen boozers. Well, thinking and drinking never really mix do they?

  The Oatlands drinking fraternity proved to be a suspicious lot. Barmen who watched too much Eliott Ness had me down for undercover fuzz or maybe a glimmerbrain who packed a blade and a grudge. The punters mostly tuned out right away, or gave me bum steers. Eventually though I got lucky. ‘Aye, what’s yours?’ a barman challenged. I trotted out my question. His eyes fleered, then with his elbow he nudged one of his mates, a beefy guy with a mane of white hair which was so intricately piled on his head that it seemed a stray thought might cause it to avalanche. ‘Sammy, d’you know a baldy barber name of Mooney?’ Sammy put a hand on his hip, camping it up something rotten and in sugary tones, eyelids flapping, he cooed in a voice that would’ve made Liberace sound like Lee Marvin, ‘No, but I know a hairy stoker called Wullie!’

  The drinkers at the bar played pass the snigger. I bought a pint and lit a fag. Some Saturday night this was shaping out to be. Where was Mooney? In a boozer with a Vat 69 or in a sickbed with a Fahrenheit 103°? What if the old bugger was selfish enough to croak on me? It’d be hopeless trying to wrest my loot from his mourning relations. No, it was better that he was hale’n hearty, even if he was gilding his tonsils at my expense. In one of my worry-centres a teleprinter with a direct line to Jeremiah began to clack. The tickertape spewing from the doom machine bore a sombre forecast concerning my future – the consensus being that I was running out of it at an alarming rate.

  Something was nudging me. I glanced down. A wee greybeard was there. ‘Hey, big fella, you looking for Pat Mooney, works as a barber down the Scabby?’ I nodded. ‘Well, he disnae drink in here any mair so he disnae.’ I nodded again. The midget showed me his empty tumbler; I had another one filled for’m. He nodded his thanks then named the pub where I’d find Mooney. ‘Aye, just across the bridge yonder – cannae miss it. Saw’m in there aboot hauf’n’oor ago.’

  He could’ve been fannying me along but I decided to buy it. With my collar jerked up and my hands stuffed into my jacket pockets, so’s I’d still have’m should they snap off at the wrists I went out past Shawfield Stadium. No duggies in there tonight, the action being over at White City. I hoped Mooney hadn’t gone there. A mugs game, the dogs. The fact that the skinny bastards started from traps was warning enough. I trudged across the bridge into Bridgeton. Enemy territory this. The old stamping grounds of the Norman Conks, the Fleet, and the San Toy; Eastend gangs who used to come across the Clyde in pre-Sillito days to mix it with the Beehives and other Southern tribes. Nowadays this was Tongs territory. A faint tremor travelled my bones. The Eastend on a Saturday night was no place for a pacific Soosider like myself.

  Mooney wasn’t in the pub; what’s more, nobody’d ever heard of’m. It was your basic boozer, cheery enough staff, but the regulars kept giving me that cold eye reserved for strangers. As I swallowed lager I figured it would be too late to get back to The Scabby for a last pint with Cullen. That doomladen hour when they ‘bung the barrels and the landlord snarls’ was fast approaching. I could, of course, hit an illicit tipple in the Mod Bar. I grinned when I recalled Gus Hagen’s reason for calling his joint The Moderation Bar. ‘It’s so you can say when your doc asks if you’re a heavy drinker, “No me, doctor – I drink in Moderation”.’ Cullen would probably be there by now. Now that I thought about it, what’d that crazy bass been doing in the diving gear? I frowned. Here I was, solo-supping in a cruddy Eastside pub. I’d scarcely parked my arse on the Big Wheel of Fun before they begun nailing it down for the night. Off with the lights. Saturday’s kaput – a box of spent matches. My own fault, of course; always place your own bets. The golden rule.

  I was maybe four gulps from the bottom of my glass when into the pub limped none other than Horace ‘Dicky’ Harte. The ‘dicky heart’ pun’s right enough mind you, for the wee man’s clock’s about as reliable as the kind you get in Paddy’s Market for a halfcrown and change back. The nickname, though, stems from a more obvious foible – Horace whistles. Horace whistles a lot; all the time in fact when he’s not rabbitting he’s making with the cheep-cheeps. Aye, quite the wee canary is Horace, though tonight in that long snow-dappled coat with its grey fur collar he looks more jackdawish. He was also wearing a classy scare-piece, a choice bit of wiggery; you would never’ve guessed that just before leaving the house he dunked his turnip in a bucketful of tar.

  Approaching the counter, Horace dunted snowflakes from his coatsleeves. The coat itself was exactly as I’d imagined the clerk’s looked like in yon Gogol story before he decided to trash it and have a new one made. So pleased was I to see Horace that I shrank behind a pillar, hoping that even with his streaked ‘granny’ specs he wouldn’t spot me in the gantry mirror. I studied him as he began to remove his gloves then, changing his mind, quickly rolled them to his wrists again – but not quickly enough: something purplish and nasty was spawning on the backs of his hands. It had to be admitted, though, he looked a lot healthier than when I last saw’m – he was good for another fortnight at least. Heavier too he was, well past the seven stones mark. And his hepatitis looked to’ve cleared up a treat.

  Horace Dicky Harte was a medical phenomenon. His flayed body had played host to more bugs than a modelhouse tick. When last we met he claimed to be suffering from an exotic disease called – what was it again? – aye, ‘Adiposis Dolorosa’, something like that. Anyway, the malady was supposed to be a condition that made fat people feel melancholy. When I’d pointed out to Horace that he wasn’t exactly shipping much lard around, he nodded, ‘That’s just the point – skinny folks like me have nothing to fight it with!’

  No sooner had Horace clambered up onto a stool than his obsessive chirruping began. ‘Whistle, and I’ll come tae ye, my lad . . .’ A barman approached. ‘A vodka with som
e orange, please, a half-pint of your heavy; and a packet of potato crisps, plain.’ It was as if from the trashy workings of a tranny, already mouldering on a rubbish dump, the mellifluous voice of Richard Burton had unaccountably blossomed forth. But believe it or not the speaker was none other than Horace. Not only was he big in the canary world, he also packed a gold-lined voicebox. Horace had been born of decent working-class parents. Glaswegians both, the salt of the earth, the Hartes were folks who didn’t shrink from bending the stiffening lead of so-called ‘received English’ to their needs. But look what they’d got for their efforts, those socialist paragons – laddy-bloody-lah, Horace, that’s what. He did it for badness of course, just to jive up his parents with his BBC enunciation. It was a rave though, listening to’m picking over his vocabulary – a mere saucerful of words – with such fastidious concern. No wonder the barman, having served’m, was edging away from the wee man and his well-modulated patter about how after catching a cab to Shawfield he’d found the stadium ‘not to be functioning’.

  ‘Look what the wind has blown in,’ Horace suddenly exclaimed, not so blind after all, as he located me in the gantry mirror and by a familiar puckering of his boil-scarred snout indicated that the find narked him very much indeed, thank you. It served the little creep right, poking around in mirrors at his age. As yet reluctant to brave the third dimension we chatted barbershop-fashion, yon oddly artificial duologue in which you and your clipper watch the lips of the phantom pair in the mirror, eavesdropping, so to speak, on their flannel about the cuddies, boxing, and fitba. How bloody boring it was, I assured Horace, to bump into’m again, and should he feel like having a fatal stroke or a cardiac arrest, why go right ahead, no offence taken; the facial fuzz was a great idea which he might well care to extend to the rest of his gong, thereby screening us from its simian offence. Naturally, this was all conveyed by tonal inflexion while my two-dimensional mouth got on with the cowardly conventions of life. It should be noted though that my approach was languid, bored even; ‘Lo, Horace, didnae know you there wae the whiskers. How goes it?’ That kind of stuff.