Espedair Street

by Iain Banks

  'You hit him?' I said. McCann nodded wearily and rubbed his forehead.

  'Ach, Ah didnae really mean tae; it wiz instinct, like. Ah didnae know whit Ah wiz daein. Totally involuntary.' He made a tutting noise. 'See ma heid? It's got a mind of its own sometimes.' I thought about this. 'I believe this calls for a drink.'

  We sat in the nave on pillow-covered pews, drinking bottled Budweiser and shorts of Stolichnaya. 'It's not done these days, you know, McCann. Glasgow's miles better and much nicer; head-butting is out.'

  'Oh, Christ, aye, European City of Culture nineteen-ninety, eh? Bloody garden festival...' He snorted and drank.

  'More hotels.'

  'An anuther fuckin exhibition centre. God, this place is goin tae the dogs all right.'

  'Aye, but the dogs have left it.'

  'Bloody right, son,' McCann said, disgusted. He was still in mourning for Shawfield Stadium, where they'd held the dog racing; its English owners had closed it in October. McCann had had to find other ways of losing money every Saturday. He shook his head. 'Ah wiz doon the docks yesterday; well, where they used tae be. Whit a mess. They're even gettin rid aw the auld fit tunnel, did ye know that?'

  'Aye.' The foot tunnel under the Clyde at Finnieston Quay was being filled in.

  'There's just yon one big cran left an the rest's aw that bloody exhibition centre.'

  'Shug from the Griffin told me they only kept the crane there because they might need it to load tanks in a war.'

  'Aye, fuckin typical, isn't it?' McCann shook his head at the general deterioration of everything. 'City of Culture... bloody garden exhibitions; just mair excuses fur the businessmen tae make a killin. Fresh paint on the double yellow lines an a bigger subsidy fur the opera.'

  'Cynical bastard, so you are, McCann.'

  'Ahm no a cynic, Jim; cynicism is fur the rich. Us poor punters are just cautious; cannae afford tae be any thin else. Cautious, an no so stupit.' He drank some beer.

  'You banned from Brodie's then?'

  'Don't think so. It aw happened in the cludgie; nobody saw.'

  'Jesus, you left this guy lying in the toilet?'

  'Whit wiz Ah supposed tae dae? Say sorry? Stupit wanker. Hope it knocked sense into him. Ah mean, Christ. Ah coulda been a real bastard and swiped his white stick as well.'

  'What? He was...' I shouted, then saw McCann's grin. He winked.

  Glasgow is not, in my experience, a violent city. I do a lot of walking in the city at night, just plodding through the streets, looking, listening, smelling the place, and I've never been bothered. Of course, being six and a half foot and looking like a mutant baboon might have something to do with that. And, okay, so I do carry a shooting stick cum golf umbrella, but that's not just for defence. It rains here, quite a lot sometimes, and I like to have something to sit on, wherever I am. I was stopped a couple of times in the early days by the police, wanting a look at the stick's business end, but they know they can't do me for it.

  They seem to be used to seeing me wandering around now; they leave me alone.

  The shooting stick has a thick metal plate at the bottom and a stubby two inch spike on the end, and it's not light; a pretty offensive weapon in the right hands (not mine though, I'd probably swing it and crack my own skull. Looks good though; I wouldn't mess with somebody carrying one. Mind you, I'm a paranoid coward).

  Purely a defensive weapon in other words; a deterrent. McCann, on the other hand, had once told me that when he was younger and running with a gang, one of the little tricks they used was to sew fish hooks behind the lapels of their jackets, so that if anyone grabbed them there to head-butt them they'd get a nasty surpnse ...

  Anyway, most of the violence that does take place in Glasgow is between gangs, not against strangers, and usually doesn't happen near the centre. I'd sooner waik through Glasgow alone at night than through London with a bodyguard. For New York, I think I'd want air support; and that's just during the day.

  'Diet Irn Bru,' McCann said suddenly, sounding like he was about to cough something up.

  'What about it?'

  'The very fuckin idea of it, that's whit,' he said. 'God almighty; whit next? Low calorie fuckin whusky?'

  'Aren't they working on some new colourless, tasteless whisky to compete with vodka?' I said, sipping some Stolichnaya. In fact this was a total fabrication, to pay back McCann for his blind man in the toilet, but:

  'Aye, Ah heard that too,' McCann said. 'Makes ye sick, doesn't it?'

  'I don't know,' I said, annoyed. 'Does it?'

  'You sure your boss doesny mind us drinkin aw this booze Jim?' McCann said, ignoring or ignorant. He held up an empty Bud bottle and inspected one of Ambrose's stained-glass windows through it.

  'I've told you.' I told him. And I had told him. McCann always asks that question, and I always tell him it's okay. 'It's okay; he doesn't mind.'

  'Positive?'

  'Certain; he's given it up. Told me to help myself.'

  McCann looked around the crates of drink piled up in the nave amongst all the rest of my Comecon booty, and scratched his chin. 'He should sell aw that stuff if he doesnae want it.'

  'Too complicated. Have to pay duty... all sorts of things. He can't be bothered.'

  'Aye, he must be rich, right enough... awright if I... ?' McCann held up his empty bottle.

  'Help yourself,' I told him. McCann went for another bottle.

  'Ah've never seen this guy, Jimmy, ye know that? Does he never come round here at all?'

  'Last time he was here was... must have been a year ago. More, maybe.'

  'Whit's his name again?' McCann used the bottle opener tied to the end of the pew, drank from the bottle.

  'Weird.'

  'Funny name, that.'

  'Funny guy.'

  'He's no goannae knock this pile doon an build an office block, naw?'

  'Can't. The building's got to stay as it is; that's why he got it so cheap.'

  'Diddae get a mortgage on it, aye?'

  'I don't think so,' I said, not sure whether McCann was taking the piss or not. 'He's rich. Eccentric.'

  'Aye,' McCann said ruefully, 'if yer rich yer just eccentric; if yer poor yer a nutcase an they stick ye in the bin.'

  'Rank has its privileges.'

  'You're tellin me, pal.'

  We drank our drinks. McCann looked round at the piles of booze. ' Aye, this stuff's all very well, but Ah fancy a pint of heavy. Cumin up the Griff?'

  'Aye; time for lunch.' The Griffin is our local; a decent, unspoiled but lively enough bar with cheap food. I've never shaken off the tastes of my childhood, and still prefer the Griffin's pie, beans and chips to the Albany's five-star steak au poivre with fennel, asparagus, courgettes and new potatoes... besides, the Albany would mean dressing up. And a bath too, probably. We got up to go. I took our empty bottles of Bud and chucked them into the shovel of the Russian bulldozer as we passed it on the way to the front doors. I had to get some cash before we went to the Griff.

  'An what the fuck's he got all this plant fur?' McCann said, shaking his head at the assembled machinery. I hauled open the small door set into the big main doors — barn-sized; I could get a double decker bus in here no problem — and hauled McCann away from the Polish dump truck (full of vodka bottles).

  'They're no his,' I told him. 'The builders left them.'

  'Aye, affy funny,' McCann said outside, buttoning up his jacket and staring across the road at the glossy, tinted mirror-shade façade of the Britoil building opposite. When I bought the folly, all that had been there was a hole; the office complex had been completed this year. Just in time for the oil slump and redundancies to be announced. I stopped beside McCann, looking at the distorted reflection of the folly shown on its tiered walls. 'Bloody monstrosity " McCann said, tutting. ' Ah think ah preferred the hole.'

  'You're a reactionary old bastard,' I told him, bounding down the steps to the street.

  'Reactionary! Me? Ye big pape.' He hurried down to catch up. 'It's no the li
kes of me that's reactionary, I'll tell you, pal; nothing reactionary about tryin tae maintain yer heritage, even if it is a hole in the ground; reactionary is yer fuckin entrepreneurs and yer shareholders, attempting tae maintain the capitalist system against the tide of history, an it doesnae matter how ye dress up that sort of...'

  McCann kept on about progress and regress, action and reaction, and capitalism and communism, all the way to the bank, where I lent him a tenner.

  As we walked back to the Griffin, I kept thinking about Rick Tumber's telemessage, wondering what he wanted to talk about, and worrying about his reasons for phrasing it just the way he had.

  You get to know how people put things, the way they use words, just where the stresses fall. Trying to recall Rick's rather Midatlantic phrasing style, I couldn't help thinking that if Rick said 'This is good news,' he probably meant 'This is good news,' contrasting it with something else, that wasn't. Or maybe I was just being paranoid, as usual.

  Could something have happened that I didn't know about? Easily; I avoid newspapers, television and radio, for most of the year. I have my Information Binges, but they're few and far between, about every two months or so.

  During an Information Binge, I rent a few televisions, buy a radio and order every paper and magazine I can get my hands on. I read everything, I have the radio on constantly and I watch TV; all of it; soaps and adverts and quiz shows and kids' programmes. A good, thorough-going Binge normally lasts about a week; after that I'm usually goggle-eyed with lack of sleep, not to mention sickened at what passes for popular culture...

  The rest of the time, I still read a lot, but mostly books and magazines, and not even news magazines. So for a large part of the year I'm totally out of touch; they could start the next world war and I wouldn't know anything about it until the streets filled with people pushing carts and prams and sticking tape over their windows...

  Had I missed something? Was there really that hidden emphasis in Tumber's message?

  No; paranoia. Had to be. Rick wasn't consistent enough for anybody to read nuances into his phrasing. His memo style depended entirely on whether he'd just taken a hit of coke, had a heavy lunch or recently fallen in or out of love again. Still, the message worried me.

  There was a song once:

  Heard much later that while I sat there

  You were flying back east and home.

  Never read your note at all dear,

  Got the message on my own.

  Threw it into the empty fire-grate,

  Went out, had a good time.

  But as it lay there cold until the daybreak

  — It was burning in my mind.

  Nothing startling... but I kept hearing the tune in my head, and my old songs have always been bad news, for me or for others. My curse, my jinx; should have called me Jonah at birth and have done with it... Mister Mistaken, Captain Clumsy...

  The doors of the Griffin approached. 'That guy wasn't really blind, was he?' I asked McCann.

  'Naw,' McCann said firmly. 'Ah never tangle with blind punters...'

  'Good.'

  '... they carry sticks.'

  'McCann...' I turned to him, but he was grinning at me, and winked.

  'Naw,' he said again, as we went through the doors. 'Ye wouldnae see me tackle a blind punter.'

  FOUR

  One day in August 1974 I met Jean Webb, walking down Espedair Street, in Paisley.

  Jean and I had gone out together, and we'd been almost-lovers, semi-intimate, on the very verge of seriousness, for a while. It had started with the usual, awkward, youthful dates, hiding in the shadows of pubs because we were under-age and fumbling kisses under railway bridges; classic behaviour. I'd been attracted to her originally because she had a nice smile and was five foot nine, reducing the difference in height between heads and mouths by three or four inches compared to the average Ferguslie girl. It had all been rather embarrassing; one or other of us always seemed to be tongue-tied, or just not in a mood to talk, though we got on with each other well enough when we didn't talk.

  For some reason, too, I was especially gormless and clumsy in her company; I spilled drinks onto her lap, stepped on her feet, tripped her up accidentally in the street, clouted her head with my elbow when I got up to go to the bar or the gents, got her long brown hair caught in my jacket cuff buttons, bruised her lip with my teeth and once — when we were having a carry-coal-bag fight in the park with another couple — tripped, fell, and threw her over my head into a bush; she was bruised and grazed.

  Another time in the same park I was waiting for her, sitting on a bench humming tunes in my head and staring vacantly into space; she came up from the side and was leaning over to say 'Boo!' when I realised she was there; I jumped up to give her a kiss and cracked her on the chin with my head; knocked the poor kid unconscious.

  She was all right, a bit dizzy for a few minutes, wouldn't let me take her to hospital, and insisted we went to the disco we'd planned on going to, but she had a bad bruise under her chin, and her father apparently took a lot of calming down and convincing that I hadn't been beating up his wee lassie; he'd been all set to come round to our flat with her two elder brothers, both of whom gave me menacing looks for months afterwards.

  I think it was that episode that defined our relationship for me, and — despite what happened later, despite our equivocal consummation — signified the beginning of the end; a combination of your standard adolescent embarrassment and a despair that I just wasn't clumsy-compatible with this particular female.

  We persevered. She took the accidental knocks and I put a brave face on the foolishness I felt when I did something stupid. I started to think about being rich and famous not by myself, but with Jean by my side; would she just restrict my freedom, or provide a stable base, somebody to come home to? I wondered what would be best, and also how you could tell when you were in love.

  I told her about my dreams. She listened, smiled, did not make fun of them. I gibbered and stuttered away for hours at a time, telling her how famous I was going to be, how much money I was going to make. She kissed me and let me feel her breasts through jumper and blouse and sometimes allowed my hand up her skirt, lying on the floor of her bedroom while the television sounded from the living room. A few times she stroked the bulge in my trousers, but there wasn't much else we could have done even if I had convinced her it was a good idea, not while the telly blared and we waited for the next knock on the door and her mum asking her if we wanted another cup of tea. I told her I'd take her away from all this; London, Paris, New York, Munich...

  I'd left school and gone to Dinwoodie's, proud of my new status as an earner, but still living at home. She'd stayed on, studying for Art College. She baby-sat for a friend of her mum's sometimes, and I went round there too, a few times. And once, almost, nearly, only just or not quite...

  On another floor in a darkened room under the flickering blue glow of another television, sound turned down so we'd hear the people coming back, the baby quiet in a room above us; lots of rolling about and bruising deep kisses and heavy breathing, and finally, me thinking Here we go! fingers on zips and cotton pulled down and fumbled aside, and the dizzying woman smell of her, pine and ocean, and the stunning heat of her around my hand, while her own fingers closed about me.

  Clumsiness and sweat and disjointed adolescent times; you wait for years and then it's over in seconds. And class-inversions. Girls I knew later who'd screw at the drop of a cap but absolutely not with the lights on; who'd always risk pregnancy but never suck you off. And odd local fashions, like the Ferguslie schoolgirl who'd been stopped fighting in the playground and wouldn't tell the teacher what terrible thing she'd been called that had started the battle. Eventually persuaded to spell the ghastly insult out through her tears, she said, 'Miss, she called ine a fucking C-O-W!'

  So when Jean felt that first spasm in her hand, and took me in her mouth, she left me amazed, because on the scoring scale I knew the other lads talked about, this was w
ay beyond ten; Jeez, this was an unreal number! It didn't occur to me that maybe she was just trying to keep the carpet clean.

  There was too little time after that. Anyway, we didn't have any contraceptives. Sometimes I felt we were the only two responsible teenagers in Paisley, and — in my most frustrated moments wished we'd just gone ahead anyway, the way everybody else seemed to.

  I only found out the next evening, sitting in the pub, that technically, if you like — I'd deflowered her then. I didn't believe her at first, even though I did recall something giving; I didn't think it was possible like that, with just a hand, a finger, but she was sure, and quite easy with it, and laughed.

  But.

  Maybe I was embarrassed about it and felt I always would be. Maybe I couldn't understand why she still wanted to wait, why she never again asked me round when she was baby-sitting, or why she wouldn't come to the flat when I moved in there, even when the others were out. I don't know. But I let her slip away.

  That spring, she fell while she was helping her mum clean the windows of their flat; she broke an arm and collar bone and cut her head; they were worried about concussion. I'd tried to see her in the hospital that same evening, but they would only let in family; I attempted to explain I was a close friend and I was going away on holiday the next day... but got all tongue-tied. I left the hot, chemical-scented corridors of the bright hospital blushing and covered in sweat.

  I really was going on holiday the next day; I and a couple of pals had arranged to go camping on Arran. We left, it rained a lot and I had atrocious hangovers for five consecutive days. We came back damp, broke and early, and I felt so bad about not having seen Jean before I'd left it took me three weeks to pluck up the courage to try and see her again... only to find that by then her family had gone on holiday.

  While she was away I set off in pursuit of a girl called Lindy from Erskine, who was nearly five-eleven, and whose dad ran a bar where bands played sometimes... but nothing came of that, either.