Strange Loyalties jl-3

by William McIlvanney

  All I was trying to do was find pieces of the happening I could weld into a purpose of my own. It wasn’t easy. The one thing that interested me so far was Eddie Foley. Eddie had always interested me. He was one of Mason’s men unlike any of the others. He was a genteel criminal. In his gentility might be his vulnerability. While I was wondering about that, Frankie said something that interrupted my thoughts. He was talking about a woman in Mason’s entourage who had apparently fallen very heavily for Dan Scoular.

  ‘What did you say her name was?’ I said.

  ‘Melanie.’

  ‘What’s her second name?’

  ‘McHarg,’ he said. ‘Melanie McHarg. She went loopy for big Dan. Ah think she thought he was the answer to all her prayers. She used to speak to me on the quiet about him. Ah think she imagined he was her ticket to a normal life. See, Melanie’s a funny one. Ye’d think the kinna life she’s led, she’d know the story. But a wee bit of her still believes in Santa Claus. She’s a romantic, Ah suppose is whit she is. Buys a Mills an’ Boon book wi’ every packet of heroin.’

  ‘She does drugs?’

  ‘Do weans like sweeties?’

  ‘Would she know Meece Rooney?’

  ‘Meece supplied her. Certainly at one time.’

  ‘You know her, Frankie. If she was in trouble, who would she go to?’

  ‘Take yer pick,’ Frankie said. ‘Ah mean, don’t get me wrong. Ah like Melanie. Always did. But let’s face it. She’s not a house, she’s a hotel. A lotta men’ve stayed there.’

  ‘But there must be somebody she would turn to.’

  ‘Might be Meece.’

  ‘Anybody else?’

  ‘Could even be Matt, Ah suppose.’

  ‘What if it couldn’t be either of them?’

  Frankie’s very mobile head became still and, in its slow turning towards me, the instinct of chatter became the wisdom of silence. His wide eyes stared at me. A parrot had just turned into an owl.

  ‘What’s goin’ on here?’ he said.

  ‘Meece Rooney’s dead,’ I said. ‘Melanie won’t be turning to him. Matt Mason’s the man that arranged the retirement. Melanie won’t be turning to him. She was living with Meece. Meece seems to have been fiddling the accounts. They killed him and left him beside the river. Maybe for easy disposal. So who would she turn to now, Frankie? Who’s left?’

  Frankie seemed to be trying to see beyond the horizon. Maybe what he was looking at was the prospect of his own death.

  ‘Ah don’t touch this,’ he said. ‘That’s it. Ah don’t touch it.’

  ‘Frankie.’

  ‘You’re not on. Ah don’t touch it.’

  ‘Just give me a name.’

  ‘Ah’ll give ye a name. Frankie White. Ah’d like to keep it off a headstone for a while yet. Come on. You know this man. You can go for him if you like. Maybe you’ll get a medal for it. Me, Ah’ll just get dead. Maybe Ah’m next already.’

  ‘Maybe you are. And if you are, I’m your best bet.’

  ‘Some bet. A three-legged horse in the Derby. Ah don’t fancy your chances, Jack.’

  ‘You don’t have to. I do. You silly bugger. What’s to lose? You tell me, nobody else knows. It just gives me a better chance of stopping him. If I can’t, you’re where you are already. You’re getting to bet with my money. Take the chance.’

  He did.

  ‘You know Marty Bleasdale?’

  He was a man from Newcastle who had been a social worker in Glasgow until dealing with the endless mayhem of other people’s exploding lives had made him shell-shocked. He went rogue. I liked him. He seemed to have decided that he was a revolutionary caucus of one. He was half-crazy and wholly sincere. He lived on the edges of criminality because, as he had once told me, ‘villains are less dishonest than the rest of us.’ He played in a jazz-band and sometimes worked at the Barras but where the eating-money came from wasn’t entirely clear.

  ‘I know Marty Bleasdale.’

  ‘He’s your possibility. Marty’s a kind of one-man Samaritan Centre for a lot of people. He’s helped Melanie before. She sees him as some kinda patron saint. Ah think because he never tried to screw her. She might go there.’

  Frankie wasn’t talking any more. Our heads had parted company, mine trying to work out how to get closer to Matt Mason, Frankie’s presumably how to get further away.

  ‘Thanks, Frankie,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, don’t say that,’ Frankie said. ‘Ah hate to hear a polisman sayin’ thanks. It usually means ye’ve said somethin’ that ye’re gonny regret. Any chance of a lift?’

  Outside his house, we sat a moment in the car.

  ‘Well,’ Frankie said. ‘Ah can’t wish ye luck. It’s against ma religion.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘With the kind of luck you would wish me, Frankie, I could be in terrible trouble.’

  He smiled.

  ‘I hope your mother feels no pain,’ I said.

  ‘Aye.’

  He looked quietly terrified of many things. He had his reasons.

  ‘Honourable,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Honourable. That was Melanie’s word for big Dan. Honourable. The most honourable man she’d ever met, she said. Ah wonder what it means.’

  ‘I don’t know, Frankie. I suppose it’s one of those things it’s up to other people to see in you. From where I’m sitting, maybe there’s a bit of it in you at that.’

  ‘You couldn’t point it out to me?’

  We both laughed. I watched him walking up his mother’s path, wearing his jauntiness like someone else’s clothes.

  25

  In Graithnock I had to find a Clydesdale Bank with a hole in the wall. The introduction of the Autobank has allowed my life to inhabit an intermittent fantasy of solvency. I have always looked on money as if it were a species of bird unhappy in captivity. It never sings there. Before autobanks, my only technique for getting access to more money than I had involved mournful conversations with an understanding bank manager in Byres Road. Now, after each heartbreaking performance in which the applause took the form of an extended overdraft, I could forget the seedy realities of finance and for a time draw money when I chose. The notes that slid towards me assumed a proper meaninglessness. They might as well have been Monopoly money, part of a game in which I had marked the cards and drew only the ones I wanted. Collect £200. Do not go to jail.

  My vulnerability being covered with money, modern society’s figleaf, I went to a florist’s. I bought a large bouquet of flowers of indeterminate genus. All I knew was they looked good to me. I went to a newsagent’s and bought cigarettes, a newspaper and a box of chocolates. I found an off-licence and managed to get a bottle of Talisker. I put the flowers, the chocolates and the whisky in the boot of the car. I drove to the Bushfield.

  Katie was in the kitchen. When I went in, Buster and I exchanged our usual greetings. He growled at me and I told him that I hoped his third brain-cell arrived soon.

  ‘You two,’ Katie said. ‘Ah think ye secretly love each other. Scartin’ an’ nippin’ is Scots folk’s wooin’.’

  ‘Aye. Don’t call the banns yet anyway, Katie.’

  ‘Ye’re early the day.’

  ‘I’ve got bad news for you,’ I said. ‘Maybe ye should sit down. I go back to Glasgow tonight.’

  ‘Ah wish ye’d told me earlier,’ Katie said. ‘We coulda put the bunting an’ the streamers out. It’s no’ often we get something to celebrate in the Bushfield.’

  ‘It’s all right, Katie. Ah know ye’re just puttin’ on a brave face.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Katie said. ‘The laughter’s just hysterical. Actually, Ah will miss ye. At least, you’re no’ boring. A different mood for every minute. Ye’re like that thing they used to say in “Monty Python”. “And now for something completely different”.’

  ‘We better square up here, Katie.’

  ‘How d’ye mean?’

  ‘That’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday night. And meals
and everything.’

  Katie turned another page of her magazine.

  ‘Jack, it’s the first break I’ve had the day. It’s the only break I’ll get the day. Don’t bother me wi’ business. I’ll see ye before ye leave. Also, I’ve got something special for ye to eat the night. Ah haven’t worked out what it’ll cost yet. Probably more than the rest of what ye owe us put together. Ah’ll see ye before ye leave.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. I turned at the door. ‘It wouldn’t be Buster a l’orange, would it? That would really make my night.’

  She stared up at me from her magazine.

  ‘More like char-broiled Laidlaw.’

  I went up to my room and sat for a while. I looked again at my personal collection of Scott’s paintings. ‘Scotland’ reminded me somehow of my father. I think it was because of the suggestion in the picture that the public reality of Scottish experience was denied in private lives. For my father, the method he hated had been to translate the demotic of Scottish traditions into a bland standard English, losing most of the meaning in the translation. For Scott, the method had been what? To simplify the darker realities of our lives into bogus tourist images? To deny the truth of what we were in order to live more comfortably with lies? But wasn’t that what we all did, what society taught us to do? Wasn’t that perhaps what Scott and his student friends had done when faced with whatever truth was represented by the man in the green coat?

  I looked at the faceless one again. The sense of Scott’s guilt had occurred to me forcefully in the Red Lion earlier today. Now, staring at the painting afresh, the element of guilt seemed to me so obvious. I remembered what John Strachan had said the first time I saw the five at supper and was wondering what their strange conclave meant. ‘Maybe the four are feeding off the man in the middle.’ Also if, as I had decided, it was a pastiche of ‘The Last Supper’, what else could it mean but guilt? It was an echo of the primal treachery, betrayal of God. Scott had been an atheist. But that Christian symbol could have a humanist reading. In his terms, it could mean treachery against people, the denial of kinship with others. Was it belief in the necessary shared humanity of all of us that had been sold for thirty pieces of silver? Who then was Judas? Or, given the same face on each plate, were they all Judas?

  I was looking at a public confession of private conspiracy. Scott had wanted that there should hang, in the house of friends he believed in, an admission of guilt. Anyone could see the painting, though not anyone could understand it. What he couldn’t find the means to declare directly in his life, whether through fear or coercion from others or the addiction of habit, he had acknowledged here in code.

  I could read some of the code now. The bearded men were no longer so well disguised. The stem of the flower that bloomed to the head of a serpent was held in Scott’s hands. His was the creativity that gave not sustenance but poison. The man with the ring was Sandy Blake, the healer who could dispense sickness as well as health. Did the double masks of tragedy and comedy belong to the unknown man? Had he become an actor? They had been watching television at Dave Lyons’ party. Had he been what they were watching? Had the apple of knowledge been bitten by Dave Lyons? If so, maybe I could get him to share some of that knowledge with me.

  I rose from the bed where I had been lying and straightened out the coverlet. I gathered the dirty clothes I had worn since Monday and put them in one of the plastic bags I always keep in my travelling-bag. I put what was for washing at the bottom of the travelling-bag. I emptied the pockets of my leather jacket and put it in next. I would be wearing the blazer. Maybe it would help Dave Lyons to believe that I wasn’t fresh off the farm. I put the rest of my things on top and zipped the bag half-way along. Why do clothes always expand between unpacking and repacking?

  I lifted the paintings and carried them carefully down to where the car was parked in the forecourt of the Bushfield. I slid the paintings in beside the flowers and the whisky and the chocolates. I retrieved David Ewart’s ashtray from the back seat and put it in the boot as well. I closed and locked the boot.

  I collected my travelling-bag from upstairs and put it in the back seat of the car. I made sure the car was locked. When I went up to my room for the third time, I noticed the bottle of the Antiquary beside the bed. It was over half-way gone. But then so was the week it was designed to see me through. It had kept faith with me. Had the beautiful, dark woman?

  I took the glass from the circular metal holder above the washhand-basin. I poured out a modest measure of whisky — purely for ceremonial purposes, you understand. I ran the water till the feeling on the back of my hand matched the word on the tap. I topped up the whisky with water almost to the brim. I set the glass on the bedside table, wiping its base first with a towel. I took the bottle down to the car and put it in the glove compartment.

  Sitting on the bed for the last time, I lifted the glass and toasted the distance gone, the distance to go. While I did that, I resolved that I wouldn’t go back to my flat tonight. Firstly, I couldn’t face it. That place was a cottage-industry that manufactured loneliness. I wanted the sense of people around me, even if I didn’t know who they were. Secondly, I knew there were people I needed to talk to in a neutral environment. The flat wasn’t it. I might have to aggress on their lives. When you do that, you don’t let them know where you live. The fox doesn’t advertise its earth. I would book into a hotel. It wouldn’t be the Burleigh, because for me it was ghosted with Jan’s presence, not to mention Dan Scoular’s. I didn’t need that. I would book in somewhere else. I rose and rinsed the glass and put it back in its holder.

  I went downstairs to get change from the bar. Two men who, I suspected, had been introduced by the emptiness of the place were talking football. Mike was on duty. We exchanged a few words. He was a man more pleasant than he knew how to show. I went to the pay-phone in the foyer.

  I remembered the number of the Grosvenor Hotel. Some of the staff there knew me. Since splitting with Ena, I had been a few times, just to be not in the flat.

  ‘Oh, Mr Laidlaw,’ the woman said when I stated my case. ‘Hold on.’ Then, ‘Listen. We’ve got a nice corner room. It’s like a small suite. How about that?’

  That was fine. I tried to put a face to the voice and I thought I succeeded. Her kindness made me feel welcome. I phoned the restaurant. It was Jan who answered.

  ‘Hullo, busy woman,’ I said.

  ‘Jack? How are you?’

  ‘The better for hearing yourself.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in Graithnock. But I’m coming to Glasgow tonight. I wondered if I could see you. Later on.’

  ‘Not tonight, Jack. It’s impossible.’

  ‘Tomorrow? Dinner?’

  When you love somebody, even their silence talks. Her pause was telling me I was no longer a personal necessity, just a social possibility.

  ‘Yes. All right. Let’s do that. Listen. Will you phone me at the flat tomorrow? I’ve got to rush now. We’re just getting organised here.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘Great. Take care.’

  ‘You too.’

  When love begins to leave, one of its exits is through the mouth. Words that were endlessly prolix with the need to try and share everything become as cryptic as an exchange between sentries guarding closed borders. The omens were bad. One week, Jan had said. It sounded as if the jury was in early. Maybe Betsy, counsel for the prosecution, had done a good job. Maybe, to be fair, I was simply indefensible.

  I phoned Brian Harkness’s number. It was Morag who answered. While she kidded me, I put my banter on remote control. Talking to Morag, what I was really doing was that thing we do when our own relationship is foundering. I was envying Morag and Brian their ideal partnership. You know your sense of them is false but you can’t help it. You keep wondering: what the hell’s wrong with me? How can all those sleek cats be in there in the warmth, purring at each other, and I’m still out here in the cold, freezing my arse off on this wall and mewing
at nothing? I recovered sufficiently from my self-pity to become briefly practical. I gave Morag the names of Melanie McHarg and Marty Bleasdale. I told her what I knew about them. I asked her to tell Brian I would be at the Grosvenor tonight and maybe he could call me there.

  I phoned Ena but there was nobody at home. Putting down the receiver, I had a vision of a dread future, with myself as the phantom phoner, haunting other people’s lives for news of the real world.

  Katie’s special meal helped. It was coq au vin. Seemingly, that first night in the Bushfield, one of my unremembered confessional moments had related to coq au vin as one of my favourite dishes. It was good, except that she had overplayed the onions a bit. If there’s a heaven, there will be no onions there.

  With good eating done and dishes washed and an awareness of something ending, I tried to pay Katie for my keep. She wouldn’t consider it. I think it was a kind of present from her to Scott. I had suspected it might be this way. I resorted to Plan B. I collected the day’s purchases from the car and gave her the flowers and the chocolates. As I carried them in to her, I was embarrassed by my lack of originality. But I think the very corniness of it perhaps touched her. She was pleased and we embraced in the kitchen. It wasn’t a long embrace. Buster, with undiminished acumen, assumed I was attacking her and barked like a pack of fox-hounds. I left her putting the flowers in water. I took the Talisker through to Mike. He thanked me.

  On the way out, I stopped at the pay-phone. I rang Troon. Dave Lyons’ voice answered. I put the phone down. He was in.

  26

  It was a fortress, wasn’t it? There were no electronically controlled gates or invisible seeing-eyes, at least as far as I could make out. You turned through the gate off Marrenden Drive and there it was among its trees, very large in weathered sandstone. It was, on the face of it, more accessible than my small flat with its double doors guarding nothing but the debris of a dishevelled life.