Strange Loyalties jl-3

by William McIlvanney

  Why I did what I did next, I don’t know. I went to the party in Jan’s restaurant. A less likely party-guest than I was at that moment it would be hard to imagine. I was drunk but it was an odd, dislocated drunkenness. Some cold, bleak part of me was watching the meanderings of the drunken part, like a sober man who is too weary and indifferent to help his befuddled friend and can only look on as he stumbles into places that he shouldn’t go. I think perhaps I was trying to reconnect with the city, where I felt like an alien, by plugging into the energy of others as if it were a generator.

  There was certainly plenty of energy at Jan’s place. The party was going well. Music was playing. Some people were dancing. Talk was loud and laughter louder. In the midst of these festivities I suddenly appeared, girt in rough thoughts, like John the Baptist at a disco. Someone had left the restaurant door unlocked. As soon as I entered, Betsy clocked me and her face had an attack of dyspepsia. She came across at once and bolted the door — securing the locks once the burglar is in. Then she went to tell Jan, who was talking to Barry Murdoch. Barry had one arm round Jan’s shoulder. I reckoned from the way Betsy was speaking to Jan that she wasn’t bringing her the good news. She was warning her of impending trouble. I saw Barry scan the room until he found me. He gave me the long, macho stare. It was like looking down the barrel of a pop gun. Jan came across.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she said.

  ‘What’s all right?’ I said.

  ‘Uh-huh. I see. It’s one of your metaphysical nights. Well, we’re just trying to have a party.’

  ‘Let the party proceed,’ I said grandly.

  ‘Oh, thank you. Will that be all right? Listen, Jack. You’re welcome here if you can behave yourself. But I’m not having any trouble.’

  ‘Could Ah talk to you, Jan? About Scott?’

  ‘Jack. You ever heard of timing? Enjoy. If you can. I’ll maybe see you later.’

  She went off to mingle. Unable to have what I needed, I made for what I needed least of all — another drink. It was white wine I thought wouldn’t have been out of place in a vinegar bottle.

  ‘The champagne’s finished,’ someone told me.

  ‘It is, it is,’ I said darkly.

  That opaque exchange, as if we were speaking different languages, crystallised how alien I was to the others. I wasn’t part of the occasion. I was something unnecessary that had been added, a quibbling footnote to the text of their enjoyment. I wandered about the place, wilfully editing their pleasure into the significance it had for me.

  If I had been them, I would have thrown me out. It would have saved us all embarrassment. People were talking loudly to one another. They were being pleasant enough. But I heard them talking about house prices and cars and business-deals and I decided that this wasn’t a party. It was an auction. I saw the flower-pot of money that had attacked me. I managed to be polite in refusing a woman’s offer to dance. If she wanted me as a partner, I wasn’t the only one who might be well advised to go easy on the drink.

  I took another glass of wine as the night suddenly caved in on me. I couldn’t reconcile this convention of the terminally self-satisfied with the bleak world I had been wandering through outside. Davy’s idea about the pyramids came back to me — all those wasted lives to construct a false, exclusive certainty, a habitat for wilful egos. I thought of Scott and Mrs White and Dan Scoular and Julian and Marlene in Drumchapel and Melanie McHarg. Somehow, I wanted a way to invite them to the party. Unfortunately, in my confused sense of things, I found it.

  There was a wild logic to my madness. I decided that I wouldn’t pick a fight with Barry Murdoch. I stopped myself from haranguing a group who were explaining to one another how the poor create their own problems. With great difficulty, I refrained from demanding that Jan talk to me about Scott. Yet these minor triumphs of comparative wisdom only led me relentlessly to an absolute folly, a way to offend in one move every single person at the party.

  I don’t know where my inspiration came from. But I suddenly found myself wrestling with my arch foe, the pot of money. Those closest to me were nonplussed at first and then amused. I suppose they thought they were witnessing one of those impromptu moments of cabaret that can happen at a party — the drunk woman’s dance on the table, the man who decides he can balance a bottle on his forehead. Drunkenness can give you surprising strength, just as rage can. I had both of them on my team at that time. I managed to lift the pot off the floor, to a spattering of derisive applause. As I made my way across the restaurant with it, legs splayed, struggling, people parted to let me pass. I had become an interesting curiosity. Was this my party piece? Was this what I did to get attention, being unable to say something witty or arresting? Perhaps it was. By the time I was standing facing them from behind the table where the food was, the room had gone silent. People were watching me, some with amusement, some in puzzled expectation. They possibly thought I was about to dedicate the money to a favourite charity. I suspect some of them believed it was a pre-arranged event. They seemed to be waiting for a formal speech. It was a short one.

  ‘You bastards!’ I shouted. ‘Eat money. It’s all you can fucking taste.’

  I decanted the money carefully into the biggest Boeuf Bourgignon in the world. As I did so, I shook the pot meticulously along the full length of the dish, as if to make sure the ingredients were properly mixed. The coins rasped against the inside of the pot to shower on to the stew and submerge in it, instantly indistinguishable from the food. The notes fluttered and settled on the surface like some novel topping of yuppy haute cuisine. I stood looking at them, holding the charity pot that contained nothing but verdigris.

  Into a vacuum of astonishment rushed a hubbub of shock. I was confronting a hydra of contorted faces. Voices bayed outrage at me. Five or six men, Barry Murdoch among them, started towards me. I wanted them to come ahead. The first one to reach me would be wearing a metal flowerpot for a hat.

  ‘Stop this!’

  The stridency of the voice froze the room.

  ‘This stops now!’

  The voice was Jan’s. Everybody waited, held in their poses.

  ‘Nobody will touch that man. Nobody. Jack, you leave now. Leave!’

  I set down the flowerpot, which was as empty as my sense of myself.

  ‘Betsy. Let him out. And nobody touch him. Don’t dare.’

  I passed through them like somebody walking among statues. Betsy let me out and locked the door behind me. I stood on the cobblestones of the alleyway in the soft rain. And drunkenness, like a false friend who was only there for the wild times, deserted me at once. I felt I had nowhere to go. I felt I had no one to be. I seemed to have consumed myself in my own grand gesture. I stood in a void and was simply a part of it. The rain was more real than I was.

  ‘Jack.’

  It took me some time to locate the voice. It was Jan, standing on her balcony. No place was ever further away or less attainable than that balcony. Once she knew I was seeing her, she threw something down to me. My hands reached out automatically and caught it. It was a plastic bag. It didn’t weigh much.

  Romeo in middle age: you won’t have to climb up to the balcony, which is maybe just as well. Juliet will stand there and fire down at you whatever you need, and even what you don’t need.

  ‘Just in case,’ she said, ‘you ever imagine you’ve got a reason for coming back here.’

  She went into the flat. I looked in the bag. There were some of my clothes there. Maybe they were telling me who I was — Tom Docherty’s iron rations of the self. They brought me back from the disorientated wildness of what my mood had been, reminded me that living is a matter of small practicalities. Postures solve nothing. Action, not movement. It was necessary to re-engage with the small practicalities. I decided on the first one.

  Taxi-time.

  SEVEN

  39

  And on the seventh day I rested. It’s exhausting trying to remake the world in your own image.

  As I let myself into
the flat, carrying my little parcel of rejection from Jan, the phone was ringing. Moving hurriedly through the darkness, I stumbled on something and cursed it. It hadn’t been there when I left. Had the furniture been mating in my absence? I lifted the phone.

  ‘Where are you?’

  It was a good question. I would have to give it some thought. ‘We’re having a slight gay-and-hearty here. You should be the guest of honour.’

  It was Brian Harkness. He sounded like a town-crier. I had to hold the ear-piece side-on to my head. There was the sound of merriment in the background.

  ‘Jack? Is that you? What are you doing there? We’re in the Getaway. Behind closed doors. A mob of us. Marty was great tonight. They’re all asking for you. That doesn’t happen often. You should cash in on it while it lasts. Get over here. We’ve done it, we’ve done it. Mason, Brogan and Walker. How’s that for a half-back line? Signed, sealed and delivered.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Matt Mason still hasn’t believed it, I don’t think. You should have seen his face. When we were bringing him out, he looked as if he’d never seen a street before. As if he didn’t recognise where he lived.’

  I thought of Betty Scoular staring out of her doorway. Matt Mason had earned his alienation from himself.

  ‘So are ye comin’? Even Big Ernie Milligan’s here.’

  ‘That’s a good enough reason for stayin’ away. I’m having my own wee ceremony here, Brian. Thanks all the same.’

  ‘Ah can imagine that. Come on, Jack. Get outa there.’

  ‘Not tonight. I’m tired.’

  ‘Well, listen. That meal’s still on. This week. Morag says you have been warned. No excuses will be accepted.’

  ‘No excuses will be made. I’m looking forward to that.’

  ‘Bob and Margaret as well. We’ll have a night. Listen. Jack. Are you all right?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, you’ve laid the ghost?’

  ‘Oh, I think so. I’m not sure where I’ve laid it, right enough. But I’ve laid it somewhere.’

  ‘No more trips to funny places? I mean, I need the car.’

  ‘I’ll see you on Monday.’

  ‘Okay. Take care.’

  ‘Enjoy.’

  ‘Oh, Jack. Bob Lilley says you’re the best. You could cobble a solution out of anything.’

  But the cobbler’s children, they say, are always the worst shod. I couldn’t solve the problems of my own life. When I put on the light, I saw that I had tripped over my travelling-bag. I hadn’t thanked Brian for delivering it. Scott’s two paintings were leaning against a wall. The Antiquary, sadly diminished, stood on the sideboard along with the green ashtray from David Ewart’s workshop.

  I would have liked to give him Michael Preston’s version of how idealism died. I felt I owed it to him. But then it was the story of a criminal act. Some of those involved in it were still alive. If I told David Ewart, it would have to be an anonymous account, with names omitted to protect the guilty.

  At least later today I could phone Betty Scoular. Dan Scoular’s death was going to be paid for. That might help her to let the grave settle and go on to wherever her life was taking her. I hoped so. This place needed women like her at full strength, not debilitated by the unjust wounds that had been inflicted on them. I might also phone Fast Frankie White. At the moment he deserved to have whatever fragile peace of mind his nomadic sense of himself was capable of. I hoped his mother was finding a painless way to go. I could still feel the echo of her gentle, dying hand in mine. I wished Melanie well. At least we shouldn’t have to use the tape.

  I drew the curtains. The place looked slightly less bleak that way. It didn’t change my mood but it put a blindfold on my loneliness, so that it had nothing to compare itself with. I opened the plastic bag Jan had given me. Two shirts came out, then two pairs of underpants, then three socks. They were unwashed. I could imagine her wrenching them from the laundry-basket in her anger. I smiled wryly to think of that one buried, subversive sock. Parting is never easy. Something of the other will remain against your will. But, in this case, not for long, I could imagine. There was still something that weighed lightly in the plastic bag. I reached in and brought out a packet of cigarettes. I opened it. There were three cigarettes inside. In the pettiness of the gesture I saw the finality of her dismissal. Maybe she would fumigate the place to complete the process.

  It was cold. I put on the gas fire. I unzipped my travelling-bag and put away such clothes as weren’t to be washed. Then I took what was for washing and put it in the washing machine. For some sentimental reason I did not care to examine, I included the odd sock. I suspect I was imagining myself as some embarrassing variant of Prince Charming. If I were ever again to match it up with its neighbour, I would be with my own true love. No wonder I hid from my motivation. I took the washing powder from under the sink and filled the white plastic drawer. I closed the machine and started it up. The sudden noise in the stillness reminded me with a shock that we were in the early hours of Sunday morning. I switched the sound off at once, grimacing to myself. I stood in the kitchen and started to worry about what living alone was doing to me. Perhaps I would finish up existing inside a private timescale of impulse and compulsion.

  I went back through to the living-room to escape from the now-I-must-do-the-washing impulse and found another one waiting for me. I had to hang Scott’s paintings. Home handyman not being one of my more impressive personas, it took me about twenty minutes to find a hammer. I took two picture-hooks from the bedroom where, on renting the flat, I had put up photographs of the children. I could repair their desecrated shrine when I bought more hooks. I hung the five at supper above the fire-place and ‘Scotland’ on the opposite wall, hammering furtively and intermittently.

  The bottle of the Antiquary had two drinks left in it. I filled out one and watered it in the kitchen and came back through. It wasn’t so cold now. I put my blazer over the back of a chair and sat down at the fire with my whisky. I took a sip and looked at the five men. Scott, Sandy Blake, Dave Lyons, Michael Preston. And the man who was still unidentified. Not even the colour of the coat was accurate.

  ‘It was brown, as I remember it.’

  Even our guilt we shape into our own needs. Scott had spent a long time shaping his. I confronted it at last.

  ‘It was brown, as I remember it.’

  Michael Preston’s voice had brought home to me how even shared actions can separate us. His sense of what had happened that night after the impromptu party in the flat with David Ewart remained clear and it troubled him still but not as it had troubled Scott. I thought of Dave Lyons. Did anything trouble him? I thought of Sandy Blake in South Africa. Maybe for him guilt was geographical.

  ‘We got drunk that night,’ Michael Preston had said. ‘It was a celebration, after all. Three of us were finishing up. Sandy still had some time to go. But he was saying goodbye to us. It was one of those nights when you’re young and you feel the possibilities. Know what I mean? We went on a pub-crawl. I suppose we felt like the new aristocracy visiting the peasants. We all thought we had so much potential then. Our horizons seemed limitless. I remember saying not unportentously that I was going to write the house down. Scott was going to paint. Dave Lyons was going to do something of great scientific value. I don’t know what Sandy was going to do. Maybe find the cure for cancer. All I’ve ever written are commentaries for television programmes that may have helped to pass the time in a few living-rooms, that died with the credits.’

  He lifted the paper-weight and turned it and replaced it. We sat watching the imitation snow-storm fall gently on the miniature house. He stared at it till it had subsided.

  ‘I sometimes think I might as well be living in that house,’ he said. ‘Hermetically sealed in my career. That night. I remember Scott warning us all against succumbing to the system. He had a dread of settling for too little. This was only a beginning, he was saying. It would all be meaningless unless we re
lated it to what mattered, to where we came from. We were all from working-class backgrounds. The chance we had was held in trust for others, he said. Whatever talents we had belonged to the man in the street. Each of us had to find our own way to reconnect with him. Find him, bring whatever gifts we had to him, and he would teach us how to use them. Without him, what we had learned was useless. It was a good speech at the time.’

  He ran his hand along some of the clip-binders filed on one of the shelves beside him. On the back of each was something written in felt pen. I assumed they were the titles of projects he had been involved in but I couldn’t read them.

  ‘Tell you the truth,’ he said. ‘I think it’s still a good speech. These.’ His forefinger played along the binders. ‘These are Preston’s Thesaurus. A personal dictionary of synonyms for futility. They make a long study of nothing. The longer I live, the more I think Scott was right that night. I wish I didn’t.’

  He looked at me and I thought I saw in his eyes how the depth of the wish was measured by its hopelessness.

  ‘We came out of the pub that night,’ he said. ‘Thrown out of the last one at time-up. It was pissing with rain. Coming down in sheets. I think in our euphoria we were almost offended that the weather wouldn’t match our mood. We doorway-hopped for a spell. We reaffirmed what we were going to achieve. Like a pact. We addressed the weather like King Lear. Telling it to behave itself. We didn’t want the feeling we had made among us to stop. We were busking an end to the night that would match the grandeur we felt in it. Then, from some final doorway, somebody saw a car. I don’t know who saw it first. All I remember is there we were talking about it. It was an old A40, pretty beat-up. It was parked across the street. There were no lights in the buildings around us.’

  They decided to steal the car.

  ‘It was a group decision, I suppose. I remember that my own clever contribution was to say, “Property is theft. Let’s thieve it back.” The idea was just to drive it close to the flat and leave it there. No harm done. Even if they traced us to the flat, we’d be off by tomorrow. It was just a joy-ride.’