The Papers of Tony Veitch

by William McIlvanney

  Laidlaw sympathised with the minister. How do you say the unsayable, especially when you’re talking about someone you never knew to people most of whom probably don’t want to know? It made it tricky. Added to that, the ceremony he was trying to perform had its origins in something for which people were prepared to walk into the mouths of lions but which had since often been processed into spiritual Valium that reduced God to the role of a celestial chemist. Why blame the minister? People got the religion the honesty of their confrontation with death entitled them to.

  Laidlaw compensated for the anonymity of the service by including Eck Adamson in the minister’s words as well as Tony. It wasn’t hard. Both of them could be seen as orphans of the same society, one disowned because he couldn’t pass the test of its ideals, the other because he took those ideals too seriously. Both their lives were not easily acceptable. Laidlaw felt the event not as an admission about someone’s life but as an attempted conspiracy against admitting it. What was going on in him and what was happening outside only converged at the end, when the frozen ritual thawed again into a painful humanity.

  He was waiting near the end of the line that was filing past Milton Veitch. There was someone Laidlaw assumed was a family friend with him. Passing in front of Mr Veitch was a group of young people, presumably students who had known Tony. They were casually dressed but in subdued colours. Inconspicuous among them was Lynsey Farren.

  As each shook hands with him, Mr Veitch was checking the faces as if he were looking for something. Whatever it was, he obviously wasn’t finding it. In the bewilderment that made an accident of his face the way weather can erode sculpture, Laidlaw recognised a kinship with Eck dying. He seemed looking for lost reassurance. He wouldn’t find it in the small, passing parade that must have been to him like a celebration of the fact that there comes a point in our lives when the world seems younger than we are and determined to unlearn what it has taught us.

  In that moment he could be seen to be lost, his money just so much paper, his status a terrible irony. With luck, he wouldn’t be able to buy himself more illusion. Laidlaw felt a brute gladness in observing him, a weird gaiety in sadness. The feeling had nothing of revenge in it, didn’t happen because Laidlaw had felt contempt for his spurious self-assurance. It was about hope, the way Milton Veitch seemed almost capable of trying to begin again because he had no option.

  It was like the possibility of growth from wild Tony’s death, from Eck’s bleak living. The odds were such growth would never happen, but the renewed affirmation of belief in its possibility was the best you could hope for from life. Laidlaw was moved. He was also glad to see Alma Brown beside him, like a wife.

  He remembered Dave bursting like a haemorrhaging tumour in the police station, spilling the pus of his guilt, his compulsive need to share himself with someone, anyone. Once started, he couldn’t stop.

  ‘Ah liked Tony, though. Ah liked him. But Ah couldn’t have respect. Ah jist couldny. He was a mug. Ye know whit Ah mean? He didny know the way it was. He didny know. He was livin’ in Disneyland. He had no right to be so stupid. Nobody has. Collins was a shite-head. He thought the world was his piss-house. He’s healthier dead. When he did that to Lynsey, I knew it was time. Ah mean, who did he think he was? He was out of touch. So Ah put him in touch. An’ Eck knows Ah’ve done it. So he has to go. Jesus, he wisny a bad auld man. But he wisny a great loss, either. Not even to himself. Ah thought at the time maybe Ah done him a favour. Then Ah knew Ah wis in bother. But Tony. Ah shouldn’t have done that. But he was askin’ for it. He was, ye know. Tony wanted to pay for everybody. Ah needed somebody to pay for me. Ah cashed the lot in on him. Oh Jesus, Ah did. That was the bad one. Collins, Ah was angry. Ah’d do it again tomorrow. Eck Ah didn’t even see. But Tony was slow and sore. We talked a bit. Ah knocked him out, ye know. Jesus, killin’ him was hard. But Ah did it. An’ faked it up. Nobody else knew. Ah liked Tony. But Ah liked me more. But Ah liked Tony.’

  Laidlaw reached Mr Veitch and shook hands with him. They both said, ‘I’m sorry’ simultaneously. It seemed to Laidlaw like the most authentic communication they had had with each other, perhaps the most authentic communication two temporarily honest men could have.

  Outside, the sunlight didn’t know Tony was dead. Some groups of people stood on the steps of the crematorium. Gus Hawkins detached himself from one of the groups and came across.

  ‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘How does it feel to be right?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Laidlaw said.

  ‘I mean about Tony.’

  ‘I wasn’t right. I just didn’t believe anybody else was.’

  ‘I didn’t know policemen came to the funerals of people who were murdered.’

  ‘I don’t know if they do. I just came to this one.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It felt like something I should do. Your girlfriend. What’s her name?’

  ‘Marie.’

  ‘She didn’t come?’

  ‘She couldn’t face it. She went through to see her folks today. She’ll be back tonight.’

  ‘Where are you going now?’

  ‘Straight into a depression.’

  ‘You want to share it?’

  ‘You not working?’

  ‘Day off. I’ll stand you lunch.’

  Gus looked at him, looked back at the students he had been talking to. His next remark seemed inspired by his identification with them.

  ‘This business? You get it on expenses?’

  ‘Okay. I’ll eat on my own.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just habit. Fair enough. But I want mine mainly liquid.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be going to the bottom of a bottle or two myself. I just want some food as a lifeline. The car’s over there.’

  They ate in the Lanterna – Sole Goujon and Frascati, mainly Frascati. They were a strange conjunction and they knew it. At first about the only thing they seemed to have in common was their separateness from the others in the room. There was a large group of businessmen at a table near them, full of expense-account bonhomie and the kind of laughter that sounds like the death-rattle of sincerity. One of them, a man about thirty whose smug abstention from proceedings had been suggesting that everything was a joke and he had heard the punch-line, began to talk about how boring travel was. His remarks developed into an account of all the places he had been.

  ‘He’s made his point well, that fella,’ Laidlaw said.

  Gus was looking round a lot as he ate, frequently shaking his head at what he saw.

  ‘Look at that,’ he said.

  Laidlaw saw a middle-aged fat man eating with a young woman. He wondered what Gus was seeing.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Gus said. ‘No wonder old Tony got angry.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Look at him.’

  ‘It’s a fat man eating his dinner. What’s he supposed to do? Shove the food in his ears?’

  ‘You don’t see it?’

  ‘But I’m keen to learn. Tell me what you see, visionary.’

  ‘He’s just a bag of appetites, isn’t he? He’s lookin’ at her as if she’s next for eating. If he could pickle the world, he would swallow it.’

  Laidlaw had to admit to himself he knew what Gus meant. The man had achieved that physical grossness you sometimes see, not just a matter of size. It was as if whatever alchemy it is that transmutes our hungers into an identity had broken down and he was left like a bulk container for all he had taken in. Laidlaw could understand how one of the idealistic young might see him as a slander on the species.

  ‘You’re not so far from Tony yourself, young Gus.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘You’re down with the galloping idealism. Your dreams are so pure, reality has no chance. You’ve got a kind of graffiti of the eyes. Most things you look at, you vandalise.’

  ‘Don’t compare me to Tony. I’m a Marxist.’

  ‘Is that why you have to sauce your meal with contempt for all the capitalists in the
room? To make it edible?’

  ‘I want to stay true to my ideals.’

  ‘So did Tony. He was gang-banged by ideals, poor bastard. Mind you, no wonder he fell into their arms. It’s raining shite here every day. Everywhere he looked, he saw lavvies posing as temples. So he tried to idealise them out of existence. But that’s a bad mistake.’

  ‘So what’s that got to do with me?’

  ‘Well, I think you’re eventually on the same side. I think there are two main badnesses where we live. One’s kind of total cynicism. Using other people. Reducing them to objects because you can find nothing to believe in but yourself. That’s crime in all its multifarious forms, most of them legal. The other’s the determined ideal that won’t learn from experience. The need to be God’s relative. I think they’re twins. Bastard twins. The only legitimate thing we have is human experience. The possibility of the difference of tomorrow. The unimaginable difference. Unpreconceived. That requires the ability to entertain real doubt. I think Tony wanted certainty. I think maybe he died of the want of it. I hope to go on living. I think the key to that is knowing you don’t know.’

  Gus sipped some Frascati.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But maybe you’re making my point. You quoted Marx there. Or didn’t you know? The reduction of people to objects. That’s capitalism.’

  ‘That’s true. It’s also Marxism. It’s a wee bit disingenuous of Marx to restrict that definition to capitalism. It’s what he was on about as well. Or didn’t you know? What’s Marxism but ideological capitalism? He’s middle-class, of course. As far as wanting experience goes, more balls on a bumbee.’

  ‘Come on, polisman. Marx is middle-class?’

  ‘So was Lenin. Handed the revolution over to a caucus of intellectuals. Freedom involves the right to envision itself.’

  Gus sneered over a forkful of fish, dismissing him. Laidlaw was smiling.

  But the issues raised gave them a cubicle of preoccupation within the room. Another bottle of Frascati and a lot of argument later, they had achieved that heightened mutual awareness some discussions generate, a sense of the never-to-be repeated specialness of the collision they were having. Without either mentioning it specifically, it seemed natural to go on.

  38

  A laughing baby boy

  One evening in his play

  Disturbed the household with his noisy glee.

  Well, I told him to keep quiet

  But he soon would disobey.

  He needed just a gentle word from me.

  How often is he gonny play that Hank Snow record?’ Tich asked. ‘Ma gums are bleedin’.’

  ‘I like it,’ Sandra said.

  ‘We know that,’ Malkie said. ‘It’s the record we’re talkin’ about. Where’s Simpsy?’

  ‘Phonin’ again.’

  ‘Again?’ Malkie was amazed. ‘He holds that phone to his gub like one o’ them oxygen-masks. Whit’s the gemme?’

  ‘Some bird in Possil. Must be love. He canny play it much more often. How long till his train?’

  ‘Just over fifty minutes,’ Sandra said.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ Tich said. ‘Ye think he’s still going to Sammy Dow’s for a drink before he catches it?’

  ‘He said he is,’ Malkie said. ‘Crazy-cuts, though.’

  ‘Well. It’s his life.’

  ‘Might be ours as well, though,’ Malkie said. ‘If any o’ those teams catch up with him in there.’

  ‘Maybe we should tell ’im tae get a gildy on.’

  Having said it, Tich looked at Malkie and Sandra. Nobody was volunteering to act on his suggestion. The music was like a locked door.

  Well, I called him to my side

  And said, ‘Son, you must go to bed

  For your conduct has been very, very poor.’

  With trembling lips and tears inside

  He pleaded there with me,

  ‘Don’t make me go to bed, papa,

  And I’ll be good.’

  Mickey Ballater was lamenting through the music his lack of a son, nobody to take over what he had achieved. Music was for him a way of disposing of the feelings the terms of his life had no use for, like an emotional colostomy. He accepted the relief with gratitude. He was sorry they didn’t have any Hank Williams’ records.

  Hank Williams was the man. He just pulled his heart out his chest and laid it on the table and let it pump the blood all over the carpet. You were wading out the room when he was finished. He was a brave singer.

  Still, Hank Snow was penicillin on a record, doing the diminishing pain in Mickey’s side no harm and leaving his head clear to work out where he was. At least the police had got a good job done on the wound. But the best ointment for it was remembering how much worse Hook Hawkins must be feeling, if he was feeling anything. Mickey hoped not. He only regretted that he hadn’t found the time to attend to the young brother. That Laidlaw had complicated things.

  But Mickey had made it to Eddie Simpson’s on the South Side. It was a safe house. Eddie remembered the old days. They were all he had since he took ill. The doctors hadn’t decided what it was yet, Eddie said, but Mickey had. If Eddie didn’t have cancer, it was coming up in the lift. There would be no remission for good behaviour this time. That was why Mickey had told him to stay away from the house as much as possible while Mickey was there. The last thing Eddie needed was any other kind of trouble.

  Anyway, Eddie had put together a scratch team for him. They weren’t much, so busy looking for trouble that if the real stuff found them they would probably come in their drawers. The only one Mickey thought might give him a run for his money was Sandra. He fancied that. When the others were there, she was always giving him secret looks, like envelopes not to be opened till later. He might arrange a later for her.

  Eddie’s son Simpsy was a measure of the others, a plastic imitation of his old man, not the same class. He might as well have ‘Made in Hong Kong’ stamped on his bum. They didn’t breed them like before but they still bred them all right. He smiled at the thought of those who believed in improving things. No matter what progress they made in the future, one thing he was sure of was there would still be supersonic robberies, a black market in laser beams.

  But he had to get to Birmingham before that. If he had to back up here for trial, he would have his own team with him. Then they would see.

  Well, it broke my heart to hear him saying

  Just before he died,

  ‘Don’t make me go to bed, papa,

  And I’ll be good.’

  ‘Thank Christ, he’s finished.’ Malkie was listening to the silence. ‘Maybe the record’s worn out.’

  They all waited a moment longer.

  ‘Sandra,’ Tich said. ‘Go and tell him we better make a move.’

  She looked to Simpsy, who had come off the phone. He nodded. She went out into the hall and knocked at the door of the room, opened it and went in. Mickey Ballater was still sitting in the armchair. He smiled at her. She crossed self-consciously towards him, aware of the movement of her own body.

  ‘Mickey,’ she said. ‘The boys think you should go now.’

  He put his hand up her skirt and she gasped. He left it there, gripping her. She didn’t move.

  ‘Ah think up there’s still a kennel for you, Sandra. Ah know a couple of ways tae let the animal out. You phone that number Ah gave you. When Ah get down.’

  She nodded. He released her.

  ‘Tell Simpsy to bring the car to Skirving Street. The rest of us are walkin’ round tae Dow’s.’

  As she went back out, he stood up and flexed, testing his side. It would do. He felt for the knife they’d got him, practised taking it out. He replaced it and smiled to think that the only other thing beside it in his pocket was his banker’s card, like a repeating egg being endlessly hatched out into money by its mother. He went through and told Malkie to carry his case.

  It had stopped raining. The dark wetness of the street was like a whetstone for his memory, sharpeni
ng his sense of himself. Out of such moments of windy bleakness his hardness had been honed, a defiant sense of style that gave fear a dramatic form. He felt now he had been right not to settle for a hired car out of here. He didn’t drive, and being chauffeured away would have been too much of a come-down, as if he couldn’t look after himself. He could. He would leave here as he had lived here, on his own terms.

  Samuel Dow’s reinforced his mood, bringing back the feeling he had had so often as a boy learning to drink in Glasgow pubs, of taking part in your own western. The big bar was busy. Mickey enjoyed standing there knowing he was the man, buying drinks for awe-struck attendants and unafraid of anybody. But he was checking it just the same.

  It didn’t take him long to notice a face he knew. He was sure the man had seen him because the impression that he hadn’t was being given off too strongly. The lifting of a pint didn’t need so much concentration. He was reading the beer as he drank it. It was Macey. With him was the one who had got the beer shampoo from Panda Paterson. Mickey sent Tich to tell Macey he wanted to see him.

  Macey came across reluctantly.

  ‘Mickey,’ he said, nodding. ‘How’s it goin’?’

  ‘What time is it?’ Mickey asked.

  Puzzled, Macey looked at his wrist and told him. Mickey consulted his own watch.

  ‘Some of his information’s accurate anyway,’ Mickey said to the others.

  They were laughing.

  ‘Look, Mickey. Ah told you as soon as Ah knew. Ah canny help it if he’s topped himself. Ye know?’

  ‘What you doing here?’

  ‘Ah have a drink here about once a week. Wi’ ma wee mate. Sammy.’