‘It’s an old story, Tully. But your dad tried to make a life.’
‘He’s from another world, Noodles.’
‘But you have things in common. The football.’
‘He showed me how to play. It’s the only thing we ever did together. I was a wee boy then and it was the only thing.’
He said it with a kind of wishful clarity, and the last few words were swallowed up as he stepped into the revolving doors.
*
Clogs was interested in Australian lager. Limbo was telling the barman it was pish, but Clogs said things were happening down under. A pint of Castlemaine arrived, accompanied by six glasses of rum and five halves of Guinness. We’d each put £10 into a kitty and Tully was the keeper, but also by now the general MC, asking difficult questions of passing strangers and milking their responses. He made six trips back and forth to our two large tables, bringing a pair of drinks at a time, before he sat down and announced that Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew could go fuck themselves as far as he was concerned. A more immediate problem was the music playing in the bar, and Tully also took that matter in hand, asking the guy who was serving if we could possibly opt out of Lionel Richie. The barman seemed annoyed by all the fuss but he pressed a button under the taps, and the just-about-acceptable music of the Cure arrived in our wallpapered corner.
‘I don’t think you’d know the difference,’ Hogg was saying to Clogs, ‘between William Burroughs and William of Orange.’ On several levels, this was an incendiary statement. Hogg had a problem with Clogs that tumbled out at various times and places. ‘I’m not trying to be cheeky or anything,’ he added.
‘I like the stuff you like, let’s leave it at that,’ Clogs calmly said. But he couldn’t quite manage it himself. Of all the boys, these two were the only real adversaries. ‘I admit to having certain reservations about your love of sheet-metal music,’ Clogs began to say, ‘but I’m willing to drop them for the sake of camaraderie and a quiet weekend with the boys.’ Hogg returned quickly, as always, with a new controversial subject – favourite films – and he rushed at it with no other wish than to score a massive victory in as little time as possible. Smarting like Stan Laurel, Hogg plucked at his hair and got narky.
‘I can tell you for nothing,’ he said, ‘that the phrase “Make my day” was first used by Clint Eastwood in Sudden Impact.’
‘Nope, you fuckan bass-slapping halfwit,’ Clogs said, ‘it comes from an earlier film called Vice Squad.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘On the contrary. Watch the films again.’
‘You know everything, Clogs.’
Tully’s attention wandered while the boys argued. ‘Still thinking about that war memorial?’ I asked.
‘You’re a mind-reader, man.’ He took a large gulp of Guinness. ‘I’m just thinking about all those names. Like my dad always says, “If you haven’t been in the army and come home and built a decent life, you’ve failed.”’
‘That’s narrow enough.’
‘Like, go away and learn how to fight, then stay home and learn how to die.’ Something was unloosening in Tully, and he was trying to hold on to it.
‘Nobody has to live like that,’ I said. ‘That’s your dad’s life you’re talking about there.’
‘But how do we avoid it?’
‘By being right here.’
‘And is it enough?’
‘We’ll see. It’s enough for now.’
We looked up. Clogs was spreading his hands and sighing. ‘Please bear witness, gentlemen, to the manner in which Hogg here must always appear to win an argument. Am I not civil? Am I not collegiate? Some would call me the king of tolerance. And you’ll notice I have not reached for the superior weapons in my armoury.’
‘What weapons?’ Hogg asked, downing his rum. The doctor took his time and appeared to measure his words carefully.
‘It’s a well-known fact,’ he said, ‘that in 1981 you had a perm.’
‘You’re a fuckan liar,’ Hogg barked.
‘There are multiple witnesses. You had a proper Scouse perm. I think your mother did it at home, David, out of a box. And you were into robotic dancing. I’m afraid these are the facts. I only deal in facts before the court. You once danced, in broad daylight, outside the shopping mall, wearing a white boiler suit with a circuit board pinned to your chest. You wore gloves. And you had a perm.’
‘You’re making it up,’ Hogg said.
A quiet period ensued when we just watched the bar and the booze began to take effect, though Limbo, whose capacity for drink was mind-boggling and endless, was sailing into his fourth hour of being pissed.
‘I hope we get past the bouncers at the Hacienda,’ Tibbs said. ‘We can’t get a knock-back from the best club in the world. We just can’t.’ With a natural confidence in happy endings, I said we’d get in. ‘But how do you know, Jimmy?’ he asked. ‘Guys get knocked back all the time. And if that happens I’m not showing my face again at the sorting office.’ Clogs unfolded a wrap of speed and we each dabbed a finger in the powder and rubbed our gums. A wee bit drunk, then a wee bit high, it was magic to feel you had things to say and people to say them to, and a gentle fog of contentment filled the bar, until Limbo sparked up a joint and was asked to leave. ‘You’re not doing that in here,’ the barman said. Tully took to his feet like Atticus Finch. He asked the barman to consider the special challenges faced by his client, the legacy of Irish depravity, a dicky heart, a wandering sister …
‘Fucking idiots,’ the barman said.
More drinks arrived and a fresh attitude. After fetching over the glasses, Tully moseyed into the foyer, looking for new action. I followed him, and soon we were talking to a pair of girls in ruffled skirts who were attending an office do. The conversation was going badly but not too badly until Tully asked them about Brookside. They said they didn’t watch it, they hated soaps in fact, but Tully, in that state, wasn’t the world’s best listener, and he quizzed them on plotlines going back four years, and then insisted they tell us if they thought Bobby Grant would kill Matty Nolan.
‘What yer on about?’ one of them said.
‘Would you like a drink?’ I quickly asked. Her friend shrugged, as if it was a good question from a bad quarter. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Why don’t I go and get you a couple of Advocaats and lemonade?’
They looked at each other. ‘Why would we drink that shite?’ the first girl said. ‘Why would we want some yellow twat-drink? Because we’re girls? Because we’re dolly birds? We’ll have two pints of snakebite and black, thanks very much.’
When I returned they took the pint glasses and spoke about us as if we weren’t there. ‘They’re not terrible-looking,’ said the second one. ‘Especially him, stupid with the green eyes.’
‘What’s your name?’ her friend asked.
‘Tully Dawson, at home and abroad.’
‘That’s him,’ I said.
‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘Tullygarven, townland of Ulster.’
‘Seen much of Manchester, then?’
‘I’ve seen it all,’ he said. ‘From the top of a statue in those gardens over the road there. Climbed up with a bottle of red wine.’
‘Bit soft in the head,’ she said.
‘Problem is,’ her friend offered, ‘they’ve got no arses. He’s got eyes and the other one’s got hair, but they’ve got skinny arses.’
‘It’s a terrible disappointment,’ Tully said, ‘because he comes from a long line of fat-arsed truck drivers.’
‘And you both talk shite. Thanks for the drinks. And take my advice – beef up your arses.’ They tottered off and Tully burst out laughing.
‘We could take you out for a meal!’ he shouted after them. ‘If you like spuds we know the perfect place …’
‘You know how to treat a lady, Tully.’
I went into the gents toilet at the back of the bar. And there was Limbo in a twilight world of hissing cisterns and broken tiles, one hand on the wall with a burning cigarette c
lamped between his fingers, Limbo, eyes closed and head back, pissing into a trough of deodorising cubes as the light flickered over a cubicle and he sang a few lines from an Orange Juice song.
‘President Lincoln,’ I said. ‘Are you doing all right?’
He dropped his head and turned towards me. ‘People have no idea what it takes to be the leader of the free world and the champion of equality,’ he said.
‘Well, it’s a burden, I’m sure. Don’t take too much of that speed.’ He staggered back fixing himself and puffed on his fag.
‘No, seriously,’ he said. ‘Are we having a good time?’
‘We’ve got to get to this gig,’ I said. ‘It’s twenty past seven. We have to find the International—’
‘Those two arguing out there,’ Limbo said, ‘it’s a bit like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, i’n’t it?’
‘It’s quite funny,’ I said.
‘And you’re all ugly bastards.’ He straightened up and burped, flicking his cigarette into the trough.
‘Thank you most kindly,’ I said.
The foyer was lit like a Chinese restaurant.
‘Beef up your arses!’ Tully shouted at me when I got back. Then he started telling me about the people walking past. He was always good at collecting information and he said the porter told him there were two different work dos – the Arndale Centre’s C&A men’s department and another place, to do with chemicals. ‘The city’s just doing its stuff and they don’t even know we’re here.’
‘Perfectly possible that they don’t,’ I said. ‘Unless you took out a full-page advert in the Manchester Evening News. “Six Scottish Pricks Get Wasted in Major European City.” People live here, Tully. They haven’t all just come here to see the Shop Assistants and a bunch of bands tomorrow.’
‘I know …’
And just at that moment, I swear to God, Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke from the Smiths came down the stairs with another bloke and went through the revolving doors. I thought I was seeing stuff – nobody else in the foyer seemed to notice. I elbowed Tully and he turned in time to see Morrissey and Marr. A lurch in the stomach. The singer was wearing a red shirt and he hit the air like a chip-pan fire. Right behind him was Johnny Marr, light and young as his melodies and smoking a fag. It was like a branch of philosophy crash-landing in front of you. The word ‘vermilion’ came to mind, and so did his lyrics, all the band’s images, and that’s how it works when you’re a fan who thinks Keats might save the world. In an instant, without a word being exchanged, Tully and I were through the doors and onto the pavement, just in time to see the famous Mancunians stepping into a Rolls-Royce.
We were the only ones there.
‘Morrissey, ya fuckan bawbag,’ Tully shouted.
Tully the disciple, paying the penalty adulation offers to self-respect. And when we are gone from the world, there will still be spores of delight, somewhere in the universe, recalling the moment Tully Dawson ran down the steps of the Britannia Hotel and spread himself over the bonnet of the Smiths’ posh vehicle, his face pressed with contorted affection against the windscreen. He hollered and he sang, hugging the car, his legs spread and his Teddy-boy shoes dangling over the edge, his trousers hitched with the effort, showing a placid innocence of white sock. I stood amazed and Tully turned his mashed face round and grinned for the whole of Scotland. He climbed off and stood back, dancing in the road, when the driver unceremoniously switched on the windscreen wipers and beeped the horn. ‘Aye, go for it, ya wanky-car-driving Tory set of dicks,’ Tully reasoned.
He blew them a kiss as the car drove off. I walked over and shook his hand. ‘What a legend,’ I said, and I stooped to pick up a burning cigarette from the pavement. I took a puff. The filter was wet. I passed it to Tully and told him whose fag it was as he had the last drag.
‘He cow’s-arsed it,’ I said.
‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind a bit of saliva. The guy wrote “How Soon Is Now?”’
8
We hopped off the bus in Rusholme and went into Victoria Wine. Tully bought a bottle of Old England and we stood outside passing it back and forth, leaning against the iron grille, the sweet sherry almost pleasant. To me, we could have been at Le Chat Noir, drinking absinthe into the turquoise night, ready for fame or oblivion. Limbo marched off down Anson Road, because we were hogging the bottle and he wanted to see the support acts. ‘Away ye go, then, National Party Rapist of Soweto,’ Tibbs shouted after him.
The International was over the road, but we took our time: it was much too enjoyable being on the street. At one point Tully, Tibbs, and I were sitting against a telephone box. ‘We could phone somebody, so we could,’ Tibbs said. He was always a bit sweet and a bit childish when he was drunk. He sat in a blue striped T-shirt and the whole of Rusholme was reflected in his eyes.
‘Like who?’ Tully asked.
‘Caesar. Or Ross. I think Ross has put a phone in his da’s Lada.’
‘Fuck his da’s Lada,’ Tully said. ‘Lad-i-fuckan-da-da. I could phone my mum and tell her Noodles is leading us astray.’
My head was tingling. I would have sat there all night. Tully rubbed a bit more speed on his gums and shook his head before slugging from the bottle in that slightly desperate way he always had. For a second I floated into privacy: the faraway mood of exhilaration that comes with excess, and I loved the excess, and loved the seeming permissiveness of that night. Who would I call, I wondered, if I stepped into the phone box? And the answer – so free of regret – was no one. I had no one to call and I was quite glad about it. Now that the queue was short, Tibbs walked over the road. ‘C’mon,’ he said, glancing back.
‘In a minute,’ Tully said.
I sat on my jacket and felt right in my skin. I’d never felt so part of the world, so part of its weather.
‘Woodbine was a good footballer when he was young,’ Tully said.
‘Your mum told me that.’
‘Well, she was telling the truth. He got a trial for City.’
‘Manchester City?’
‘Aye. The silly bastard.’
‘That’s amazing.’
He looked away. ‘He could’ve been down here in Manchester years ago.’
I passed him the Old England and he drank it.
‘It scares the health out of me,’ he sang from the Bodines song.
He sighed and looked into the yellow distance. ‘I totally love those words,’ he said, ‘and I wish they were mine.’
It was always the way with Tully: keeping his worries close. I never pushed him to say what he wanted to say – I knew he was pushing himself – but with all the hilarity of that weekend came a brightening emotion in him. I could see it clearly, the dream of newness tugging him along, the wish to separate from home.
*
Limbo crashing into the world of the anoraks was like a bird of prey arriving for tea at the ducklings’ end of the loch. He’d already swooped round the dark circumference of the hall and was now making his way to the front. Feathers falling, he stumbled towards the stage, tipping drinks down his gullet and smoking two cigarettes at once. It might have slipped his mind that he had one going when he lit the second, but Lincoln at play in the fields of the Lord, our friend Limbo at the International, was a mighty, sovereign, ravenous creature in love with more for more’s sake.
The venue was like a ratty school gym. Disco lights revolved in high-up gantries and lasers scanned the linoleum dancefloor. The odour of student sweat was mingled with high-tar cigarettes. The tables up the back of the venue were sticky with beer. It was a small place, and from our perch at the bar we could see the quality unfold. Near the entrance, Hogg was talking to a Japanese girl in red braces. She nodded a lot. Dr Clogs and I speculated about whether Hogg might have used the words ‘radical Belgian funk’ in trying to seal the deal. Meanwhile, a crimson-faced Tibbs, with much pointing and quaffing, was addressing a group of Liverpool lads on the whys and wherefores of Militant, the Trotskyist group causing a bit of trouble
for the Labour Party at the time. The words, ‘Naw, but …’ appeared to be the central mantra in his presentation.
I walked off on my own with a glass of water. It was amazingly cold and I felt for a minute it was clearing my mind. As if by some accidental empathy, a beautiful woman appeared at the edge of the crowd. She had coloured rags in her hair, black skin, and the reddest lips I’d ever seen. She looked over. It was only a second and I knew I had no chance, but I began thinking of what I might say to her.
A thump of the bass drum announced the band.
‘Yeeeeeeeeee-ha!’ shouted a voice. The female singer came to the mic, carrying a plastic tumbler and a tambourine.
‘Hello, we’re the Shop Assistants.’ She was wearing a Chinese cap and seemed not entirely devoted to the art of performance.
‘Yeeeeeeeeeeeee-fuckan-ha!’ came the voice again.
It was Tully Dawson, down at the front. The venue was compact enough and the crowd shy enough that a mad boy could be an amplifier.
He loved expressing his admiration for a band by shouting them down. Was it disappointment when faced with the real thing? Was it pride asserting itself? There was no obvious explanation, and, whatever the urge, he handled it with a frenzied deployment of the word ‘shite’. It’s a largely forgotten pastime, that of abusing live bands, but I’ve never known anyone else who did it with such obvious brio. Tully could dominate a hall with the heat of his invective. Once, at a Spear of Destiny gig in Ayr Pavilion, he made Kirk Brandon threaten to end the show. And here he was again, drunk and moshing with his subconscious at the edge of the stage. ‘Total sh-iiiiiiiiiiiii-te!’
The band went shambling on.
He shouted himself hoarse. Nobody minded. Then he came to the bar. ‘They’re pure shite, aren’t they?’ he said.
‘No. I think they’re great,’ I said.
‘I’m only kidding.’ He paused. ‘I like to give them a bit of bother.’
‘Why, though?’
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