Its Colours They Are Fine

by Alan Spence

  Theirs was one of four rickety tables arranged along the wall facing the bar. Above them, rain was still streaking the frosted glass of the window but they no longer cared as the night grew loud and bright around them.

  ‘Didye see that wee lassie?’ said Robert. ‘Cannae uv been merr than six year auld, an ther she wis marchin alang in the rain singin “Follow Follow”. Knew aw the words as well. Magic so it wis.’

  ‘Bringin them up in the Faith,’ said Billy.

  Over at the bar an old man was telling the same joke for the fifth time.

  ‘So ther’s wee Wullie runnin up the wing, aff the baw like, y’know. So ah shouts oot tae um “Heh Wullie, make a space, make a space!” An he turns roon an says “If ah make a space Lawrence’ll build fuckin hooses oan it!”’

  A drummer from one of the accordion bands was standing next to him at the bar, still wearing his peaked cap. Addressing the bar in general, he said, ‘Aye, if Lawrence wid stoap tryin tae run Rangers like is bloody builders we might start gettin somewherr!’

  Robert hadn’t been listening. He was still thinking about children and the Faith. He turned to Peter.

  ‘Is that wee burd ae yours no a pape?’

  ‘Ach she disnae bother,’ said Peter, and added quickly, ‘Anywey, she’s gonnae turn when we get merried.’

  ‘Ah should think so tae,’ said Billy. ‘See thae cathlicks wi weans. Fuckin terrible so it is. Tell’n ye, see at that confirmation, the priest gies them a belt in the mouth! Nae kiddin! A wee tiny wean gettin punched in the mouth! It’s no right.’

  ‘Soldiers of Christ for fucksake,’ said Peter.

  ‘D’ye know whit ah think?’ said Robert.

  ‘You tell us,’ said Peter.

  ‘Ah think it’s because thur families ur that big they don’t bother wae them. D’ye know whit ah mean? Ah mean it stauns tae reason. It’s lik money. The likes a some’dy that hisnae goat much is gonnae look efter whit e’s goat. Well! Ther yar then! It’s the same wi families. Folk that’s only goat wan or two weans ur gonnae take kerr ae them. But thae cathlicks wi eight or nine weans, or merr, they’re no gonnae gie a bugger, ur they?’

  ‘They eat babies an aw!’ said Peter, mocking.

  ‘You kin laugh,’ said Billy. ‘But ah’m tellin ye, that’s how they huv such big families in the furst place. It disnae happen here mindye, but see in some a thae poor countries wher ye’ve goat famine an that, they widnae think twice aboot eatin a baby or two. Usetae happen aw the time in the aulden days. Likes a the middle ages, y’know.’

  Peter didn’t argue. It might well be true and anyway it didn’t really matter.

  ‘Whit d’ye make a that cunt this mornin then?’ asked Robert. ‘Cryin us aw fascists!’

  ‘Ach ah’ve goat a cousin lik that,’ said Peter. ‘Wan a they students y’know. Wurraw fascists except him like. E wis layin intae me the other day aboot the Ludge, sayin it was “neo-fascist” and “para-military” an shite lik that. E says the Juveniles is lik the Hitler Youth an Ian Paisley’s another fuckin Hitler. Ah don’t know wher they get hauf thur ideas fae, neither ah dae. E used tae be a nice wee fulla tae. But is heid’s away since e went tae that Uni. Tell’n ye, if is heid gets any bigger, e’ll need a fuckin onion bag fur it!’

  ‘Sounds lik mah nephew,’ said Billy. ‘Tryin tae tell me that King Billy an the pope wur oan the same side at the Boyne! Talks a lotta shite so e dis. Ah jist cannae understaun them ataw. Ah mean, if wurraw supposed tae be fascists, whit wis the war supposed tae be aboot?’

  (Those old newsreels again. Nuremberg rally. Speeches. Drums. The liberation of Paris. VE Day.)

  ‘Ach fuck them all!’ said Peter. ‘Smah round, intit?’ He made his way to the bar. ‘Three haufs ’n three pints a heavy, Jim!’ He made two journeys, one for the whisky, one for the beer, and when he sat down again Robert was telling a joke.

  ‘Huv ye heard that wan aboot the proddy that wis dyin? Well e’s lyin ther oan is death bed and e turns roon an asks fur a priest. Well, is family thoaght e wis gawn aff is heid, cause e’d always been a right blue-nose. But they thoaght they better humour im like, in case e kicked it. So anywey the priest comes.’

  ‘Impossible!’ said Peter.

  Billy shooshed, but Robert was carrying on anyway.

  ‘An the fulla says tae the priest, “Ah want tae turn father”. So the priest’s as happy as a fuckin lord, an e goes through the ceremony right ther, an converts um intae a cathlick. Then e gies um the last rites, y’know, an efter it e says tae the fulla, “Well my son, ah’m glad ye’ve seen the light, but tell me, what finally decided ye?” An e lifts imself up, aw shaky an that, an wi is dyin breath e turns tae the priest an says, “This’ll be another durty cathlick oot the road!”’

  ‘Very good!’ said Billy, laughing. ‘Very good!’

  ‘Ah heard a cathlick tellin it,’ said Peter, ‘only the wey he tellt it, it wis a cathlick that wis dyin an e sent fur a minister!’

  ‘Typical!’ said Robert.

  ‘Ah’ll away fur a pee,’ said Peter.

  While he was gone, Billy asked Robert if he’d seen any of Peter’s cartoons.

  ‘Ah huv not,’ said Robert.

  ‘Great, so they ur. E’s a bitty an artist like. Anywey, e goat this headline oot the paper – y’know how the pope’s no been well – an this headline says something aboot im gettin up, an Peter’s done this drawin a the pope humpin this big blonde. Ye wanty see it!’

  Peter came back.

  ‘Ah’ve jist been tellin Robert aboot that drawin a yours, wi the pope.’

  ‘Ah think ah’ve goat it wae me,’ said Peter. He rummaged through his wallet and brought out a piece of paper. Gummed on to the top was the headline POPE GETS UP FOR FIRST TIME, and underneath Peter had drawn the pope with an utterly improbable woman.

  He passed it round the table.

  ‘Terrific!’ said Robert. ‘Fuckin terrific!’

  Peter put it back in his wallet.

  The talk of Peter’s artistic talent reminded Billy, yet again, of the ruined Plasticine model. He quickly slopped down some more beer.

  He set down his glass and held it in place as the room swayed away from him then rocked back to rest. He was looking at the glass and it was suddenly so clearly there, so sharply in focus. All the light of the room seemed gathered in it. Its colour glowed. The gold of the beer. Light catching the glass and the glistening wet mesh of froth round the rim. He was aware of his glass and his thick red hand clutching it. The one still point in the room. And in that moment he knew, and he laughed and said, ‘Ah’m pished!’

  The group over at the bar were singing ‘Follow Follow’ and Billy shouted ‘Hullaw!’ and the three of them joined in.

  ‘For there’s not a team

  Like the Glasgow Rangers

  No not one

  No not one.

  An there’s not a hair

  On a baldy-heided nun.

  No not one!

  There never shall be one!’

  The barman made the regulation noises of protest, fully aware that they would have no effect.

  ‘C’mon now gents, a wee bit order therr!’

  ‘Away an fuck ya hun!’

  The accordion band drummer produced his sticks and somebody shouted ‘Give us “The Sash”!’ The barman gave up even trying as the drummer battered out the rhythm on the bartop, and the drunken voices rose, joyful, and on past closing time they sang.

  ‘Sure it’s old but it is beautiful

  And its colours they are fine

  It was worn at Derry, Aughrim,

  Inniskillen and the Boyne,

  My father wore it as a youth

  In the bygone days of yore

  And it’s on the twelfth I love to wear

  The sash my father wore.’

  Billy was vaguely aware of Robert going for a carry-out and Peter staggering out into the street. He swayed back and aimed for the door, lurching through a corridor of light and noise, getting faster as he went
, thinking he would fall at every step. Out of the chaos odd snatches of song and conversation passed somewhere near.

  ‘C’mon now sir, clear the bar . . .’

  ‘An ah didnae even know the cunt . . .’

  ‘RIGHT gents!’

  ‘So ah shouts oot tae um Make a space Make a space . . .’

  ‘Ah’m gonnae honk . . .’

  No not one.

  Into the street and the sudden rush of cold air. Yellow haloes round the streetlamps. The road was wet but the rain had stopped. He leaned back against the cold wall and, screwing up his eyes to focus, he looked up at the sky and the stars. All he knew about astronomy was what he had learned from an article in the Mail or the Post called ‘All About the Heavens’, or ‘The Universe in a Nutshell’, or something like that. Millions of stars like the sun making up the galaxy and millions of galaxies making up the universe and maybe millions of universes.

  Robert came out of the pub clutching his carry-out under his arm. Peter emerged from a closemouth where he’d just been sick.

  ‘Yawright son?’

  ‘Aye Robert, ah’ll be awright noo ah’ve goat it up.’

  Robert handed him a quarter bottle of whisky.

  ‘Huv a wee snifter.’

  ‘Hanks Robert.’ He sipped some and shuddered, screwing up his face. Then he shook hands lingeringly with each of them, telling them they were the greatest.

  ‘Ah fancy some chips!’ said Robert.

  ‘Me tae,’ said Billy.

  ‘Ah’ve took a helluva notion masel,’ said Peter, and the three of them swayed off towards the chip shop, passing the bottle between them as they went.

  At the next corner, Billy stopped to drain the last drops, head tilted back to catch the dregs. Tenements looming. The night sky. Dark. Galaxies. He looked at Robert and asked him, earnestly, if he’d ever smelt fall.

  ‘Smelt whit?’

  Recovering from a coughing spasm, he tried again, this time enunciating his words very carefully.

  ‘Robert.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Whit ah meant tae say wis, have ye ever felt small?’

  Robert looked thoughtful for a moment, before replying, emphatically, ‘Naw!’ Grabbing Billy’s lapel, he continued, ‘An you’re the biggest cunt ah know, so ah don’t see whit YOU’RE worried aboot!’

  ‘An neither dae ah!’ said Billy, laughing. ‘It’s fuckin hilarious!’

  And in all the stupid universe there was not a man like himself, not a city like Glasgow, not a team like the Rangers, not a hair on a nun, not a time like the present, not a care in the world.

  Telling it, he shouted.

  ‘God Bless King Billy!’

  ‘EE-ZAY!’

  And he hurled his bottle, arching, into the air, into the terrible darkness of it all.

  Brilliant

  Shuggie’s gaffer Tosh had been in a hurry to get home, so the whole painting squad had knocked off a few minutes early and by the time the factory hooter went, Shuggie was already in the toilet having a smoke, looking up, aimless, at the walls and doors of the cubicle where he sat. Somebody had spoken to Tosh about re-painting them, trying to brighten it up. It must have been years since it had been done, whitewash engrained with grime, patterns eroded by the damp, and over it all the slogans, messages, drawings. Years of them, names and dates, football scores, headless, limbless, naked women, giant cocks, gang-symbols, initials, invitations, challenges, claims; all jostled together, crowded each other out, layer over faded layer.

  He liked to come across ones he’d written himself.

  EVEN THEM WHO RULE SUPREME

  SHITE IT FROM THE CRAZY GOVAN TEAM

  He was pleased with that. It was good. The Govan Team was his gang. Across the top of the door he’d written SHUGGIE OK.

  The whine of the hooter died away and he heard scuffling footsteps, then Eddie’s voice. ‘Izzat you at it again? Makes ye deef so it dis.’

  ‘Away ye go ya fuckin arse-bandit!’ shouted Shuggie.

  ‘Right!’ said Eddie. ‘Here it comes. Wanker’s doom!’

  He jumped up and threw an oily rag over the top of the door, down into the cubicle, just missing Shuggie’s face and landing in his lap. Shuggie lobbed the rag back over the top, but as it hit the floor Eddie was already on his way out. Shuggie heard him laugh, the door banging shut behind him.

  There was no paper in the toilet, so Shuggie took the folded newspaper from his jacket pocket and tore off a piece from the front page. The banner headline said BELFAST BOMB TERROR. Three dead. On the back of it was a picture of a girl in a bikini. Curvacious 23-year-old Lynn Waters. Hobbies ski-ing, dancing, reading. Would like to go to America.

  He wiped himself and flushed Lynn Waters away with the three Irish dead. He had a look to see what was on television. Nothing much. Then he remembered the advert. He found the page and read it over again. JOIN THE PROFESSIONALS. A soldier with a machine-gun. Smaller pictures of the same soldier, playing football, jumping down from a tank, wandering through an Arab bazaar.

  He tore round the advert, folded it carefully and put it away in his pocket. Then he stuffed the rest of the newspaper down behind the cistern. At the side of the wash-hand basin was a tin of stain-remover, thick and black. He scooped some out and did his best to clean the paint from his hands, before heading home.

  Thursday was his mother’s night out so he had to get his own tea. She’d be off with her friend to the pictures or along to the bingo at Cessnock. Shuggie’s father had died four years ago, knocked down by a lorry. Shuggie had been twelve then. It seemed a short time, but already his father’s memory was fading. Sometimes he couldn’t remember his face.

  (At other times he could see him clearly. His father sparring with him and his big brother Davie. His father giving them money. His father, drunk, singing ‘Moonlight Bay’.)

  Davie had served his time as a welder and gone to Australia, so now only Shuggie and his mother were left in the house.

  On his way home he stopped in at the chip shop. It had only just opened, so he had to wait a bit for the chips to be ready. The woman before him in the queue was about thirty. Her hair was dyed blonde, lacquered and piled high on her head. He could smell her scent, even in the thick atmosphere of vinegar and smoking fat. Behind him, two small boys about ten, a girl a year or so older. The boys were grappling, the girl ignoring them. An older man came in, nodded to the woman.

  ‘How’s Maisie!’ he said.

  ‘How’s John!’ she replied.

  She stretched and yawned, shook her head and smiled at the man. Above the deep-fryer was a long mirror, tarnished and blotched here and there. At either end were old faded adverts for Tizer (The Appetizer) and sparkling Vimto. Shuggie stared at the woman’s reflection, but she was looking away, somewhere else. He shifted his gaze along to the top of Louie’s shiny bald head, reflected. Louie was banging and shaking a basket of chips, lifting them clear of the bubbling fat. He shouted across at the boys to stop their fighting or he’d put them out. They stopped for the moment, sniggered, began prodding and digging each other quietly. The blonde woman bought some chips.

  ‘See ye Louie,’ she said. ‘Cheerio John.’

  ‘Cheerio.’

  Shuggie bought a fish supper and a penny pickled onion. He hurried home the last few blocks, the greasy brown packet a patch of warmth, clutched against his side.

  As soon as he got home he lit the gas fire in the kitchen and switched on the radio, letting music blare through the house, fill the empty space. Then when he’d gobbled his tea he kicked off his boots and slumped down into one of the armchairs. He sat there for a bit, stretched out, limp, staring into the fire. Then he remembered the advert in the pocket of his overalls. He looked at it again. If he joined the army he would maybe see a bit of the world. He had never been any further than a bus-run to Morecambe at September weekend. In the army he could learn a trade. That might keep his mother happy. Sometimes she moaned at him. If his brother could get a decent job, why
couldn’t he, instead of just labouring like his father.

  Shuggie’s father had been a labourer in the yards most of his life. For years he had worked in Harland’s. Shuggie passed the site every day on his way home from work. The yard had closed down now and the buildings were gone. Just a wire fence and a flat expanse of concrete, here and there weeds growing, bits of rusted metal.

  After a while he got up and put on a kettle of water to wash himself at the sink. He looked out across the back court. Demolition had already begun on the tenements facing. There were no lights, the shape was ragged where walls had been knocked away, where bits had crumbled and caved in.

  Soon the demolition would reach round here and Shuggie and his mother would be rehoused. He didn’t like the idea of being put out to one of the schemes. Castlemilk. Nitshill. There was nothing to do. They were too far away from anywhere.

  He looked down below to where a scabby-looking mongrel was snuffling and rummaging in the midden, poking among the tin cans and ashes. He remembered something he’d read in the paper about one of the schemes, Easterhouse or Drumchapel, where packs of wild dogs were supposed to be roaming the streets, fighting and chasing each other and even attacking people. The paper had blamed people who bought the dogs as pups. Then later, when they couldn’t look after them, they turned them out. And now they were banding together, in packs.

  The kettle was boiling. Before he washed, he dug out a blunt stub of pencil from his pocket and filled in his name and address on the army application form.

  When Shuggie had washed and changed into his suit, he headed down to the corner where Eddie was already waiting, pacing back and forward, hunched, hands in his jacket pockets, looking about him, spitting through his teeth. Shuggie feigned a swipe at him and Eddie ducked, swung with his boot, just missing Shuggie. Then they both made as if to butt each other, and laughed.

  ‘Good joab fur you ah’m in a good mood pal,’ said Shuggie.

  ‘Ach don’t annoy me son!’ said Eddie.