Strange Loyalties

by William McIlvanney

  I rang Kentish Town. Nobody answered. I rang the restaurant. I wished nobody had answered. It was Betsy, pleased to elocute precisely that Jan wasn’t there. I rang Jan’s flat. Standing lonely in a busy place, I thought how much I could have used a night with my friends. Where was Tom Docherty anyway? There are few sounds more forlorn than the phone of someone you love ringing out with no one to answer.

  FOUR

  21

  Someone’s death can be like a flare illumining where you are. You realise with a shock how far you have wandered from where you were intending to go, how strangely the terrain differs from where you had hoped to be. Driving to Thornbank, I was still held in the livid brightness of Scott’s dying. The landscape was more than a landscape. It was also a private ordnance map of questions and messages to me. The countryside and the villages I passed through seemed to make an innocent statement about the coexistence of people and nature but the subtext for me was the strangeness of what I had become.

  Outside of Graithnock, I drove past familiar fields where three of us had wandered a lot one summer. We would be fifteen, Davy, Jim and me. Jim’s father had greyhounds and we sometimes took them with us. I remembered the private club of our laughter and the grandiose folly of our expectations. Jim died at nineteen on a motorbike. I had met Davy by accident a few years ago. He was an architect who appeared to be drinking what was left of his dreams to death. I was a middle-aged detective who liked to try and read philosophy, like someone studying holiday brochures in the poorhouse.

  In the village of Holmford I passed a shabby council house I had known before they finished building it. I had been there with one of the first girls I took home from the dancing. I was seventeen and so was she. We missed her last bus and walked the few miles to Holmford. Seeing the doorless and windowless shell of the building, I carried her over the threshold. It wasn’t a long marriage. We stayed there maybe a couple of hours, away from the eyes of others. We could have done anything without being observed. What we did was kiss and touch each other in many places with endless gentleness and sing songs. We must have sung about twenty duets. No doubt my performance would have earned me disbarment from the mobile stag party that was male adolescence in Graithnock at that time. But I didn’t care. I acquired with my first interest in girls a conviction that whatever good things happen between two people looking for love are their own sweet secret and nobody else’s business. And, anyway, I enjoyed what we did. I think the songs were a kind of making love, a shared dreaming, a faith in what would be, even if it didn’t happen between us. Thinking of black-haired Mary and wondering how she was now, I wished her well. I wished her a good duet with someone kind. The house then, it seemed to me, was where I had been. The house now, I was afraid, was maybe where I was.

  It’s not just you that moves on. Places move too. You go back and you find that they are not where they were. The streets and buildings may remain, with modifications, but they aren’t any longer the place you knew. The looker makes the looked at and what I was seeing perhaps was a kind of absence, a self no longer there. I had come into what I took for manhood among these parts of Ayrshire and they had meant much to me, not just as a geography but as a landscape of the heart, a quintessential Scotland where good people were my landmarks and the common currency was a mutual caring. Why did it feel so different to me today, a little seedy and withdrawn? Had I dreamed a place? Going through Blackbrae towards Thornbank, I recalled that big Pete Wells was dead. He had come from here, the father of a friend of mine at Graithnock Academy. I had enjoyed listening to him talking many times. He had been one of the strongest believers in the worth of people I had ever met and in the social justice that was coming. Thinking of him, I wondered what he would think of me and of what I had become. Stopping in Thornbank to ask the way to Fast Frankie White’s mother’s house, I felt as if I was asking directions to the faith Pete Wells had had. Was it still there and could I share it?

  The house was in the middle of a terrace, a two-storey roughcast. As I walked up the path, I noticed that the curtains of the upstairs bedroom window were still drawn. I tapped the letter-box lightly. A woman opened the door. She was maybe forty, pleasantly strong-featured.

  ‘Yes?

  She said it quietly, as if conversation were a cabal. I found myself joining in the conspiracy.

  ‘I’m looking for Frankie,’ I said. ‘I was passing through. I thought I would say hello.’

  ‘You haven’t heard?’ she said.

  ‘It’s been a long time since I saw him.’

  She glanced upstairs.

  ‘Come in,’ she said.

  She ushered me into the living-room and closed the door.

  ‘It’s Mrs White,’ she said. ‘She hasn’t long to go. A couple of weeks at the most. Frankie’s upstairs with her now.’

  I understood why Frankie White was home. Brian had said it would take more than the SAS to get him out of London. The death of your mother qualified.

  ‘Ah’m sorry,’ the woman said. ‘Ah’m forgettin’ maself.’ She held out her hand. ‘Ah’m Sarah Haggerty.’

  ‘Jack Laidlaw.’

  ‘You known Frankie long?’

  ‘Quite a few years. Back and forward.’

  ‘Ah was just makin’ a cup of tea there. Ye want one?’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  She left the kitchen door open and we talked in a quiet and desultory way. The nature of her references to how Frankie was ‘workin’ in London these days’ convinced me that she thought the work was legal. When she asked me what I did myself, I didn’t want to mar her image of Frankie as an honest grafter. I said I worked for quite a big firm. In personnel. Involved mainly in recruitment. I was glad she didn’t go on to ask me about working conditions as I was running out of euphemisms. She was full of praise for Frankie’s concern for his mother. It seemed he had arranged leave of absence from his work in London to stay with her till she died. He didn’t care if it cost him his job. There were people in Thornbank, she said, who spoke badly of Frankie, especially after what had happened lately. What had happened lately? She didn’t seem to hear the question. Perhaps it was because the kettle was boiling at the time. But the gossips didn’t know the real Frankie White. ‘He loves that woman up the stair. An’ he’s a good judge.’ Unlike a lot of people these days, he hadn’t forgotten where he came from.

  The picture she painted of Fast Frankie White as an upholder of the solid virtues in shifting times was an interesting departure from realism, the portrait as an abstract of improbable colours. Frankie was good-looking and unviolent and he dispensed slickness like a Brylcreem machine. But what he promised, you must never hope to be realised. He had a mouth like a dud cheque.

  Yet in this place Sarah Haggerty’s sense of Frankie seemed less ludicrous. The style of the room was familiar enough to me to be part of a whole contemporary trend in interior decoration: filial plush. In this case, it meant thick wall-to-wall carpeting, heavy wallpaper, a lot of ornaments and a fyfe-stone fire-place encasing a very elaborate metal-work gas-fire.

  I liked the style fine not because it pleased the eye but because it pleased the heart. I had seen examples of it all over the West of Scotland. What it meant was gratitude. Its essence was that you should realise this place had very definitely been decorated. The person who lived here mattered to her family and this was their way of thanking her for enduring threadbare carpets and linoleum while she sacrificed to bring them up. If you were to judge Frankie White by what he had done for his mother, you came closer to understanding Sarah Haggerty’s naive idea of him. I just hoped the video hadn’t fallen off the back of a lorry. That would have been like making a crucifix out of stolen gold.

  ‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘Jack, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right. Thanks. Sarah?’

  She nodded. I was glad to be one of the family before Frankie arrived. It should make our performance easier. I had been adopted just in time. Frankie came in.

  I couldn�
�t remember having seen Frankie White without his make-up. I was seeing him now. Even Pagliacci had a place where he took off the greasepaint. This was Frankie’s. The flip attitudes were gone. The fear of what was happening to his mother still looked out of his face. Perhaps most revealingly for Frankie, who normally dressed in the sartorial equivalent of neon lights, he was wearing a woollen shirt, track-suit trousers and trainer shoes. Then he realised who it was he was looking at.

  ‘Hullo, old friend,’ I said, being not too subtle with the cue. ‘I was explaining to Sarah that I haven’t seen you for a while.’

  ‘Oh, Frankie,’ Sarah said. ‘Ah was just sayin’ to Jack here about yer mother. He hadn’t heard.’

  Trouble always travels in company, as Katie Samson would say. As if upstairs wasn’t bad enough for Frankie, here was a policeman drinking tea in his house like an old family friend. What was happening to the world? Frankie didn’t know. He stood in the middle of our charade like the only person at the masked ball who had forgotten his costume. I thought I had better not offer to shake hands in case he had a cardiac attack at the end of my arm. Sarah helped the situation unknowingly by getting a cup of tea for Frankie and saying she would go up and see his mother.

  ‘You two must have a lot to talk about.’

  Frankie was wondering what it was. He stirred his tea very slowly.

  ‘What is this?’ he said. ‘Ah’m clean, Mr Laidlaw.’

  ‘Call me Jack. We’ve got to keep up appearances.’

  ‘Ah’m clean. Ah came up from London tae see ma mother out. Ah’m not involved up here any more. Ah don’t need this.’

  ‘Frankie. I’m not here on official business.’

  ‘Mr Laidlaw –’

  ‘Jack.’

  ‘Jack.’ He didn’t use the name with complete conviction. ‘What polisman was ever anywhere that wasn’t on official business? You mob don’t have friends. You have informants. Who are ye kiddin’? You’re lookin’ for information. Ah don’t give information. You know that.’

  I did. Frankie White had never shopped anyone. It was what made him accepted among men a lot harder and more successful than himself.

  ‘All right, Frankie. But this is personal information. It’s not for use in the courts. It’s just for me. Why did you fall out with my brother?’

  ‘What brother?’

  ‘Scott.’

  ‘Who the hell’s Scott? Ah don’t know your brother.’

  The troubled amazement in his eyes was not for denying. He was having a bad day and he didn’t know where it came from. I told him Gus McPhater’s version of the incident in the Akimbo Arms.

  ‘Ah remember somethin’ like that,’ he said. ‘Was that your brother? Jesus, he was wild. Runs in the family, eh? But Ah never understood what it was supposed tae be aboot. Ye no’ ask him?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  I thought I saw an infinitesimal relaxation on Frankie’s face.

  ‘What happened?’

  I told him.

  ‘Ah’m sorry. That’s hellish. Ah’m sorry. Jack. But Ah never knew what that was about. Ah think the fella was just drunk. Picked on me. Maybe he didny like the suit Ah was wearin’. He wouldny be the first.’

  The way he used my first name confirmed my suspicions. False intimacy is treachery’s favourite weapon. Judas kisses. The best way to knife a man is to embrace him as you do it. I decided I didn’t believe him. He knew what I needed to know and he was lying. I felt my anger freeze me to the chair. I stared at Frankie. Drinking his tea seemed to demand as much concentration as threading a needle.

  ‘Frankie,’ I said. ‘Tell me why Scott quarrelled with you.’

  ‘Ah wish Ah knew.’

  ‘Frankie. Ah need to know.’

  ‘What can Ah say?’

  ‘The fuckin’ truth.’

  ‘Come on. Ah can’t tell ye what Ah don’t know.’

  We will take our little deceits to the edge of the grave. We will trivialise even death. Frankie White was staring the ultimate truth in the face and still he couldn’t kick the habit of a lifetime: lie to the police. My compassion for what was happening in his life atrophied.

  ‘Frankie,’ I said. ‘You’re a petty crook. And you’re not very good at it. You’re a fantasist and a liar and a phoney. But you’ve got two things going for you. Just two. I suppose they’re what hold you together. You’ve never touted to the polis. And if that woman Sarah’s anything to go by, there are maybe a couple of people who believe in you as a good man. Like your mother. Your mother must think you’re something special. What I’m going to do. If you don’t tell me what you know. I’m going to make your name a bad smell everywhere. Not just in Glasgow. I know where you’re living now.’ I told him his address in Kentish Town. ‘But before that. I’m going to go upstairs and tell your mother things that’ll destroy her faith in you.’

  We both sat still in the room for a couple of minutes, despising me. I thought of Pete Wells and knew I wouldn’t have liked to look in his eyes just now. I had threatened to make an innocent old woman’s dying miserable in order to get at her son.

  ‘Frankie,’ I said. ‘I apologise. Of course, I won’t say anything to your mother. It would be like pissing on my own mother’s grave. I’m sorry. Forget it. Forget I asked.’

  Frankie finished his tea.

  ‘You know,’ he said. ‘The last week or so. Ah’ve had to look at maself in a different mirror. It’s not nice. All that woman’s done for me. An’ what did Ah give her back? An’ she still believes in me. It’s probably all she’s got to believe in. If she stops believin’ in that, she’ll know that all those years were wasted. In one way, Ah’m glad for her that she hasn’t been out the door for the past few months. She hasn’t heard what the village thinks o’ me these days. May she never. That’s what your brother was talkin’ about. Ah honestly didn’t know that’s who he was. He was a stranger to me. But he knew me all right. And he knew what had happened.’

  He lifted his cigarettes from beside the fire and offered me one. We lit up. I waited. He was talking to himself as much as to me. A question would have been an intrusion.

  ‘Ah’ve been thinkin’ all this week,’ he said. ‘Ah wish Ah wis more of a man. Not just for me. But for her. Ah mean, there she is. She hasny cheated the world outa tuppence change in the whole of her life. She could teach God fairness. She came through the sorest times an’ made them intae a bed for me. An’ whit does she get oot them? A fuckin’ toe-rag for a son. An’ Ah’ve been thinkin’. Ah want to give her somethin’ to hold in her hand before she goes. Somethin’ good. Some belief in me. Just so that she can shut her eyes on a good feelin’. It’s the least she deserves. An’ Ah’ve been wonderin’ how Ah do that.’

  He looked across at me.

  ‘You’re a respectable man,’ he said.

  ‘I think you could be confusing me with somebody else, Frankie.’

  ‘Come on. Jack. Jack Laidlaw. If you’re not, ye certainly look the part.’

  I couldn’t see where he was taking me.

  ‘Jack. Ah’m even callin’ ye Jack. Just like old friends. How about takin’ that a stage further? Ah’ll make a deal. Ah’ll tell ye what ye want to know. An’ you do one thing for me. You walk up that stair an’ talk to ma mother an’ be ma friend. Not many people round here come about this house these days. Sarah is it. For the rest, it might as well be a leper colony. At least while Ah’m in the house. But if you went up there. An’ ye sat a wee while. An’ ye told her what a good man Ah am an’ how much ye believe in me. That would be something, eh? See what Ah mean? Could be like morphine for ’er. She’ll float out in a dream. That’s all Ah’m askin’. Help me to give her somethin’ nice she can cuddle to herself till she gets tae sleep.’

  He was finding it difficult to go on. But he did.

  ‘You see, you don’t know her. But she’s worth it. This is a wumman that . . .’

  ‘Frankie,’ I said. ‘Don’t waste your breath.’

  He looked saddened and
hurt.

  ‘For that generation of working-class women,’ I said, ‘I’d burn down buildings. I know how much they gave and the shit they got back. You don’t have to convert a disciple. Just tell me what to say an’ Ah’m yer man.’

  He smiled at me and I smiled back and we were a momentary brotherhood – two reprobates who nevertheless understood the shared goodness they had come from.

  ‘Ah’ll leave the details up to you,’ he said. ‘Ah canny think of one thing in ma favour at the moment. Ye’ll see why when Ah tell ye. Your brother knew something that had happened here in Thornbank three month ago. He knew Ah was involved in it. Don’t ask me how he knew. Ah think he thought Ah was more involved in it than Ah was. But Ah was involved all right. An’ he hated me for it. Ah couldny believe how much he hated me that night.’

  I remembered Gus McPhater’s awe at Scott’s anger. That small, vicious altercation was about to clarify into meaning, like an insect noise that is finally identified.

  ‘Dan Scoular’s dead,’ Frankie said. He paused as if he was still not fully used to the idea. ‘The big man’s dead. You know who he was? He was as good as ye get. Your brother knew he was dead. An’ he blamed me for it.’

  The name of Dan Scoular whispered a memory at me that I couldn’t quite catch. Scott had mentioned him to me more than once. Something about how formidable he had been.

  ‘A bit of a puncher?’ I said. ‘An ex-miner?’

  ‘That’s your man. You knew him?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well, what happened was. He was unemployed. An’ Ah got him into a bare-knuckle fight. Wi’ Cutty Dawson.’ I was familiar with the name of the ex-heavyweight boxer. ‘Dan won. But they thought Cutty might be blinded. An’ as a loser he got no money. Big Dan wouldn’t have that. So he’s taking on the promoters next.’

  ‘Who set up the fight?’

  ‘Matt Mason and Cam Colvin. Dan was Matt’s man. Cutty was Cam’s.’

  ‘So what happened?’