by Louise Welsh
My empty wallet burned in my pocket. I cursed my warped conscience for making deadweight out of the money I’d brought back from Germany. It had been seeing me through my slow decline in the pub and the bookies’ shop. I’d lost count of the times I’d resolved never to touch it again, though I never went so far as to give it away. 'Do you want another drink?'
'No,' she started to gather her things together, 'Bobby frets if I leave him on his own for too long.'
We retraced our steps back towards the bus station. On Buchanan Street the clock was still caught mid-flight, its long legs poised on exactly the same spot, but its hands had ticked round the hours. The Cumbernauld bus was already at its stance, a new conductor issuing tickets to the waiting passengers. Mum glanced at the queue, making sure she still had time to board, then turned back to me, her face serious.
'William, I know things aren’t right with you just now, but remember whatever’s bothering you it’ll never be so bad you can’t share it with your old mum.'
I gave her a hug. It was hard to remember there’d been a time when she’d been taller than me and able to set everything right. She fished in her handbag for her purse, took out a twenty-pound note and folded my hand over it, squeezing it tight.
'Ach, Mum, you don’t have to.'
'Wheesht. Just for just now. You can pay me back later.' I leant down and gave her a kiss on the cheek. 'Remember, whatever you do your mammy’ll always love you.'
I said, 'I know that, Mum.'
Knowing I could never grieve her with what I’d done, I waited till the bus moved off, then turned and made my way back to the Gallowgate.
It was late that evening when I returned home from the pub lightened of the twenty my mum had given me. The envelope had been burning against my chest since I’d slipped it into my jacket pocket; now I was anaesthetised enough to face what it might hold. I sat down on the bed, took the envelope in my hands and slit its seal for the first time since Bill had handed it to me over a year ago. Inside was a map. I unfolded it, revealing a small red biro ring around a lakeside portion of a country park. I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes, then slid my fingers inside and drew out the only other thing in the envelope: a photograph.
Two young men stood grim-faced and weary at the edge of a lake. It was dusk or dawn on what looked like a brilliant summer’s day, but this was no holiday snap. One of the men was Montgomery, younger, with more hair and less gut, but still recognisable. The other man was taller, broader and more powerfully built. I hadn’t seen him before, but I took an educated guess and decided that he was Bill senior, the father of Sam-loving-gay-gangster Bill. Montgomery held an edition of that day’s newspaper in his hand. There was no blood, no violence, no murdered corpse or bruised face, but there was something horrid about the image that forced my eyes to stay on it. This photograph had caused me a lot of grief in Berlin. In a way it was responsible for everything that had happened there, and I had no idea what it meant. I reached into my pocket and felt for my lighter. It would be an easy matter to burn the photo and have done with the whole business.
I turned the lighter over and over in my hand, then discarded it and slid the image and the map back into the envelope. I got a piece of tape from my props box and stuck it to the underside of my bed. I could think of a better hiding place later. Perhaps by then I would know what I was hiding and what to do with it.
Berlin
WHEN I LEFT the theatre that evening Sylvie was standing in the yellow sliver of light cast by the open stage door. She raised her head and smiled, like a diva about to embark on her opening number. Which in a way I suppose she was. I hesitated for a second, then she shaded her eyes against the brightness. I let the door swing to and the beam of light slipped silently away, leaving us alone in the gloom of the car park.
There are some conjurers I know who claim their art helps them when it comes to women, and perhaps it does, but it’s never worked like that for me.
'Hey.'
Her voice was slightly deeper than I remembered, made hoarse by the damp and the cold.
'Hi.' I hesitated, wondering why she was there. 'Thanks for volunteering tonight.'
Sylvie’s expression was hidden by the dark, but her voice sounded like it had a smile in it.
'You’re welcome.'
'Aye, well, you saved my skin.'
'Always a pleasure.'
Men’s-mag wank fantasies fluttered across my mind. I put my suitcase down and asked, 'Are you waiting for someone?'
'Yes.'
Her slim silhouette looked vulnerable against the night shadows. The car park had a bleak abandoned feel, but there were still a half dozen or so cars scattered in the parking bays. Their headlamps were dead, windows dark; anyone could be sitting in them, watching, waiting for me to leave the girl on her own. My mind glimpsed the image of her face, caught in the half turn of a laugh, snapped at some celebration, her smile at odds with the stark appeal for witnesses. I pushed the picture away and bit back the urge to ask if she’d be OK. She was the captain of her ship, I of mine. Besides, I had the feeling she might laugh.
'I’d best get going. Thanks again, enjoy the rest of your evening.'
I unlatched the handle of my case, ready to trundle my burden to the nearest taxi rank and on to my hotel.
'Aren’t you going to ask me who I’m waiting for?'
Then, of course, I knew, but wanted to hear her say it anyway.
'None of my business.'
She took a step forward and the wank mags did another quick flit.
'I was waiting for you.'
I let go of the case, not ready to reach towards her, but wanting my hands free all the same.
'I’m flattered.'
I could see her face now, her bright expression somehow open and unreadable at the same time.
'You don’t know what I want yet.'
The unease was back. I glanced towards the abandoned cars wondering if a movement had drawn my eye there.
'I naturally assumed it was my body.'
Her smile grew wider.
'You Irish guys are all the same.'
'Scottish.' The brow beneath the smooth fringe pinched and I added, 'But my granddad was Irish if that helps.'
'I bet you’d say you were Klingon if it helped.'
'Assuming they don’t have national service.'
She laughed.
'You’re funnier off-stage.'
'So I’ve been told.' Somewhere beyond in the dark a tram hissed across the wires. She shook her head and I saw raindrops jewelling her dark helmet of hair. I waited for her to tell me what she wanted, then, when she didn’t speak, said, 'So what can I do for you?'
'Shall I tell you over a drink?'
'I thought you’d never ask.' I glanced at my suitcase. 'Do you mind if we swing by my hotel so I can check in and dump this bag?'
She smiled showing perfect American pearly whites.
'Maybe we could have a drink there?'
'Why not?'
I returned her smile, but kept my teeth hidden, thinking Casanova himself couldn’t have managed things better, forgetting that she hadn’t told me what she wanted.
In the hours since I’d arrived the district had changed. It was still busy, but the pace had slowed. We were at a crossroads of the night. The traffic of homeward-bound theatregoers and late-night diners was cut through with the young club crowd for whom the evening, like everything else, was still young. Sylvie led me along a street lined with bars and restaurants and I caught glimpses of couples and clusters of friends caught in the bright lights, smiling. I could almost have imagined myself in London and yet I was most definitely abroad. Maybe it was just post-show tiredness made worse by a slight sense of dislocation, but everything looked too good, too clean, too nice for me to relax. It felt like the scene in the movie just before the bad guys come blazing in.
We waited for a tram to clang its way around a corner then I stepped from the pavement and into the road.
'H
ey, hasty.' Sylvie put her hand on my arm and nodded at the red pedestrian light.
'Sorry.' I grinned and stepped back onto the kerb. 'Where I come from traffic lights are for the aged, the infirm and homosexuals.'
The light switched to green, we crossed together and Sylvie asked where I was staying. I told her and she said, 'It’s pretty close, we can walk from here.'
'Any good?'
Sylvie shrugged her shoulders.
'I’ve never put in any time there.' She flashed me a smile, her heels brisk against the concrete. 'I love new hotel rooms, don’t you?'
'I’ve spent too much time in them.'
'I haven’t.'
We’d turned away from the bars and cafés into a side street dominated by the skeleton of a half-constructed building. Blue plastic flapped in the structure’s frame and I thought of a giant ghost ship travelling through the night, sails slapping against the squall. Sylvie stepped onto the kerb of the unfinished pavement, and our pace slowed as she teetered along its edge, pausing occasionally to steady her balance like a tightrope-walker on the highest of high wires. I walked beside her, my suitcase’s wheels grumbling against the roadway’s newly surfaced tarmac. Sylvie stretched out her arms, seesawing with exaggerated concentration, then placed the tips of her right fingers against my shoulder to steady herself.
'If I ever make it big I’ll live in a hotel. Clean sheets every day, a minibar full of cool drinks, room service, cable TV, a shower with fuck-off water pressure…'
We reached the end of the pavement. She wavered, swaying slightly like it was a long way down; I took her hand and she jumped lightly from the verge, landing in a small curtsey. I said, 'And a cooked breakfast every morning.'
'A cooked breakfast whenever you wanted. Midnight, if you felt like it, and…’ She hesitated making sure she’d got my full attention before adding her pièce de résistance ‘…
free toiletries.'
We were back on a main street now. A young couple crossed our path and went into a bar, his arm around her shoulder, hers around his waist.
'See if you were in Glasgow at this time of night the streets would be full of drunks.'
'Yeah? Why?'
'I don’t know. That’s just the way it is.'
'Where I come from only big-time losers are drunks.'
I felt myself bridle.
'Is that right?'
'Yep, just the guys that are too fucked-up to score crystal meth. Getting drunk’s for pussies.'
'Lucky pussies. Where is it you come from?'
'Let’s just say I come from here, now.'
'The here and now?'
'You better believe it.' The heels of her boots gave a final clack then she stopped before a doorway. 'Here we are, Hotel Bates. It doesn’t look very lively.'
I glanced at the shuttered windows, the fastened storm doors and sleeping neon sign.
'The guidebook said this was a twenty-four-hour city.'
'It is, but only where it pays to stay open late.'
I rang the bell and watched, straining my ears for the sound of a porter’s footfall, then pressed the bell again, unsure whether it was ringing somewhere deep within the house or if it had been disconnected sometime around the porter’s bedtime. I stopped and listened.
'Did you hear something?'
Sylvie shook her head. I started to bang my fist hard against the door. But my blows seemed to be absorbed by the thick wood; all I was going to end up with was a sore hand.
Behind me, three notes chimed like an incomplete scale on a cracked xylophone. I turned towards the sound and saw Sylvie switching on her mobile, her face illuminated by the phone’s green glow.
'Perhaps we should call them.'
I glanced at the address Ray had given me.
'I don’t have their number.'
But Sylvie was already keying the buttons on her mobile. She nodded towards a hand-painted sign above the porch. Somewhere beyond the bolted door a phone started to ring.
We waited twenty peals then Sylvie broke the connection, retapped the number and we waited twenty more. I swore under my breath. Then Sylvie said the words that every single man and many a married man who’s just met an attractive young woman longs to hear.
'I guess you’d better come back to my place.' Then she added the caveat we all hope is just for form’s sake. 'There’s a spare bed.'
I’d imagined Sylvie living somewhere compact and modern, an apartment as bright and uncluttered as the bars we had passed. But it was obvious when she opened the door that the years had been unkind to Sylvie’s flat.
The hallway’s unpolished lino and beige wallpaper could have dated from before Soviet times. There was a stack of unopened mail spewed across the hall table and an old slack-chained bicycle propped against the wall. The bicycle sported a man’s battered leather jacket on its handlebars. It looked triumphant, like a redneck truck with roadkill strapped to its bull bars. The apartment had the rundown temporary feel of a place that’s sheltered a succession of tenants and received no care in return. Sylvie gave the mail a quick uninterested glance.
'Well, here we are, home sweet home.'
'Great location.'
She laughed.
'We like it.'
I wondered if the other half of the ‘we’ had anything to do with the leather jacket. Sylvie started to take off her coat.
'Coffee?'
'I think I can do better than that.' I unzipped my suitcase and drew out the bottle of duty-free Glenfiddich I’d stashed there. 'I knew there was a reason I was dragging this bloody bag around with me.'
'Looks like good stuff.'
'I thought you said alcohol was for pussies?'
'I said in America alcohol is for pussies. We’re in Europe now.'
'Ah, America, that narrows it down.'
Sylvie gave me a look.
'Nosy boy.' She draped her coat over the mystery man’s jacket, then took my raincoat and hung it, snug, embracing hers on top of the pile. 'You go introduce yourself to Uncle Dix and I’ll fetch us some glasses.'
'To who?'
She walked through to the kitchen and I positioned myself in the doorway watching her peer into cupboards as if she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for.
'Uncle Dix.'
She looked up, giving me the benefit of those perfect teeth again and pointed across the lobby.
I muttered, 'Casanova my arse.' And walked into the dimly lit lounge hoping to discover that Uncle Dix was a cat or maybe a small dog of the non-yappy variety.
Whoever had decorated the room had been in a hurry, or perhaps they just hadn’t had enough paint to go round. The walls and ceiling were ransom-note red, the paint applied in uneven swathes, a choppy red sea, pink-foamed and unpredictable, or the interior of a burst blood vessel.
There was a small anglepoise lamp pointing up towards the ceiling, and a half dozen or so tea lights guttering towards extinction on an unused hearth. The walls sucked the light into them making the shadows in the room dark and crimson like arterial spatters at a murder scene.
The man I supposed must be Uncle Dix was sitting on a brown leatherette easy chair.
The chair had a rip in its arm that had been mended with gaffer tape. Whoever had mended it probably hadn’t expected the repair to last. They’d been right. Uncle Dix plucked gently at the tape’s edge, as if testing the sticking power of the glue, then, when the strip succumbed unfurling towards him, he smoothed it gently back over the rip, sealing it tight against his next mild assault. There was no TV flickering in the corner, no interrupted book or newspaper placed on his lap, just a deep ashtray half full of dead rollups on the coffee table beside him. Uncle Dix was either a man with something on his mind, or a man giving his mind a rest.
We age people on much more than their faces. We check out their clothes, the condition their body is in, the company they keep. We look at their hair, the way they talk, all of this in the first few seconds of meeting and without even knowing we’re do
ing it. I’m pretty good at calculating people’s ages. It’s part of the job. I coughed, the man on the chair moved his gaze from the torn arm towards me, and I decided he could be anywhere between thirty-nine and sixty. He gave me a long, uninterested stare. The kind of look a man gives his shopaholic wife’s latest purchase.
'Hi, I’m William.' I stuck my hand out. He waited a beat beyond politeness then shook it softly without rising from his seat.
'Dix.'
His voice had the rusty quality of old keys and broken locks. It was hard to make out the colour of his hair in the gory gloaming of the room, a steel-grey that might be black. His face was studded with stubble, which I guessed was two days’ growth drifting into the third night. He wore a pair of loose jogging trousers and a half-buttoned shirt beneath which I could glimpse tendrils of chest hair. Dix looked unkempt, unwashed and was carrying about half a stone too much weight, but I had a sneaking feeling he was the kind of man that women find attractive.
I lowered myself onto the couch, wishing Sylvie would hurry up.
'Sylvie’s just fetching some drinks.'
Uncle Dix kept his eyes on my face but his hand had gone back to its plucking. Once again there was a brief pause before he spoke, like the hesitation between the wires in a long-distance phone call.
'You’re back.'
Against Dix’s hoarse whisper Sylvie’s voice sounded like the clear chime of a Sunday morning church bell.
'Sure looks like it.'
Sylvie held three mismatched glasses pinched in one hand with my whisky swinging negligently by its neck from the other. She placed herself cross-legged on the floor between us, putting the bottle and glasses on the coffee table, keeping the overfull ashtray at the heart of the arrangement. I sensed some disagreement, past or maybe just postponed, between the two and it crossed my mind that I might yet find a hotel willing to take me in.
Sylvie said, 'William’s homeless.'
And shot me a dazzling smile. I unscrewed the bottle and started to pour three measures.
'Temporarily homeless.'
'His hotel locked him out.'
Uncle Dix turned his eyes towards me. They were puffed and bleary, but they could see OK. I wondered again how old he was and watched him take a sip of whisky. He made a grimace of approval, took another sip and said, 'Bad luck.'