The Big Man

by William McIlvanney

  Sarah Haggerty was the girl Frankie had gone out with when he was young. Mrs White saw her as the most likely source of a cure for Frankie’s instability. When she mentioned the state of the nation, she was forbidding him any excuse for committing crime. When she talked about having the bedroom decorated, she simultaneously gave him a blackmail note and reintroduced the saintly spirit of Sarah Haggerty.

  Frankie chewed on his food like a rag that stopped him acknowledging the pain. Somewhere far inside himself he almost admitted, as he always almost admitted in the presence of his mother, what a renegade he was. He knew that his life affronted this house and what it stood for. Every time he came here, he half-hoped the pain would be less. It never was because his mother didn’t seriously change. She had perhaps become slightly less tolerant and more cross-grained over the last few years but those were surface scratches. The substance of her hadn’t altered and that was an awesome, benign endurance, a seemingly limitless capacity to forgive the world whatever it tried to do to her, an incompetence in self-pity. She stole nothing from life, neither materially nor emotionally. Daily, she bartered justly with her circumstances.

  The self-contempt she always innocently threatened to bring out in Frankie, like an allergy to himself, was nearer the surface this morning anyway. Dan Scoular was the reason. Frankie was already trying not to feel guilt about the situation in which he had involved Dan. He wasn’t sure that Dan could handle it. He remembered the expression on Dan’s face when Frankie had given him the track-suit, as if Frankie was part of a plot which had already decided what Dan was going to do. Dan had taken it reluctantly, like a uniform for which he hadn’t volunteered but been enlisted.

  Frankie deliberately steered his thoughts between the twin guilts of big Dan and his mother. The compass he clutched tightly was that they didn’t understand the way things were, the hardness of his life. He had to make a living any way he could.

  As Frankie took his tea and toast, finishing the breakfast he hadn’t wanted but couldn’t commit the insult of refusing, she was still parading her delicate grief and he was still admitting almost nothing to her or himself.

  When he came out, it still wasn’t light. He got his sister Jessie’s old bike out of the hut. He had checked it out before going to bed, blessed it with Three-in-One oil.

  Cycling down through the darkened scheme, he found the exhilaration of the rushing wind act like a bellows on the enthusiasm his mother’s talk had banked down almost to extinction. Possibilities flared up in his mind. This could put him right in with Matt Mason and that would mean some real money. He would have a way in to a lot of jobs, who knew how big. He might be really on his way. What he had to do was make sure that he kept big Dan to his contract. Matt had given him his instructions: tell the big man as little as possible, make him too knackered to ask. Work him hard. Matt Mason would be looking for a fit man in a fortnight.

  Outside Dan Scoular’s house, Fast Frankie swung off his bike and laid it against the hedge. The light was on in the living-room downstairs. He whistled once and saw the curtains part and close. He sat down on the kerbstone. The morning wind needled his cheeks. He heard the door open and stood up and took hold of the bike. But there was no sound of feet. Looking round, he saw that the light was off and the door was open but no one had appeared. Then he saw Dan’s head come out and glance around.

  ‘Anybody about?’

  ‘Who ye expectin’, Dan? The bogeyman?’

  Dan Scoular came out on to the step and closed the front door very delicately, as if it was the fuse of a bomb. He glanced around again and tiptoed down the path. He stood shivering on the pavement.

  ‘What’s the problem, Dan?’

  ‘Sh! Don’t speak so loud.’

  ‘What is it?’ Frankie whispered. ‘Ye feart the wife hears ye and doesny let ye out to play?’

  Dan looked down at himself, dressed in the track-suit Frankie had given him.

  ‘Ah feel such a diddy in this gear,’ he said.

  ‘All the joggers wear that. Okay. Are ye right?’

  ‘Ah just don’t want anybody tae see me.’

  ‘Come on, Dan.’

  ‘Can we not just walk till we’re out the scheme?’

  But Frankie was already on his bike and pushing off. Halfheartedly, in a kind of embarrassed lope, Dan Scoular joined him. Almost immediately he had stopped.

  ‘Frankie!’ he hissed. ‘Who’s that comin’ up? Christ, it’s auld Wullie Mairshall.’

  ‘It doesny –’ Frankie had started to say but Dan Scoular was off.

  As Frankie looked round, he saw his charge disappear round the back of a house and start to go through the gardens. Frankie decided to pedal on and catch up with Dan when he re- emerged. As he came alongside Wullie Mairshall, he nodded and spoke.

  ‘Fresh mornin’, Wullie,’ he called.

  ‘That you, Frankie? Hold on a minute.’

  Frankie stopped. Wullie was peering up towards where Dan had been.

  ‘Ah could swear Ah saw some bastard goin’ round the side of a hoose there. Did ye notice?’

  ‘Not me, Wullie,’ Frankie said. ‘A trick of the light maybe.’

  ‘No’ wi’ ma e’en, Frankie. The last thing to go wi’ me will be ma eyes. Ah’ll bet ye Ah can see through the coffin-lid. Ah saw somebody, Frankie. Ye for takin’ a look wi’ me? He looked like a big yin.’

  There’s nobody, Wullie. Ah doubt ye’ve had too much to drink last night.’

  As he finished speaking, there was a startlingly loud, deep barking, as if a big dog had a microphone held to its mouth. Muffled curses and scuffling noises were overwhelmed by the continuous barking.

  ‘Aye, maybe ye’re right, Frankie,’ Wullie Mairshall said. ‘But if Ah was drunk last night, there’s a big dug been on the bevvy as well. Anyway, Ah don’t think we’ll have to worry. By the sound of things, big bastard’s been turned into Kennomeat by noo. See ye, Frankie.’

  In his nervousness Frankie forgot to say goodbye. He pedalled on as if he was part of a cortege and not sure that he wasn’t in the hearse. If Dan had been torn in legs or hands or anywhere else for that matter, the fight was over before it had started and so was Frankie White’s career in the big time, and maybe in any time at all. He heard a back door opening somewhere and a voice shouting oaths. He was already planning a trip to London when he saw Dan Scoular emerge back on to the road and keep on running. He seemed to be fit enough. Frankie had to pedal hard to catch up with him.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘Big, daft bloody dug!’ Dan Scoular said and slowed to a walk.

  Frankie came off his bike and walked beside him.

  ‘Did it bite ye?’

  ‘Not for the want of tryin’. Ah’m glad that chain held.’

  ‘But it didny get ye?’

  ‘Ah’ll tell ye somethin’. Ah’ve learned some very fancy footwork already. Ah made Gentleman Jim Corbett look geriatric there. That was ma first bit of trainin’. Ah’m knackered already.’ He was breathing deeply. ‘See, that’s somethin’ nowadays. Ye noticed that? How many workin’-class folk have got hounds of the Baskerville? It’s right. The place is lowpin wi’ mad dugs. It’s a sign of the times. They’re all that feart from one another these days. They don’t know where the next mugger’s comin’ from. It never used to be like that. Ah hate bad dugs. The bastards.’

  ‘Right. Let’s go,’ Frankie said, having confirmed that no injuries threatened the big fight.

  ‘Frankie, give us a chance. Ah left ma lungs back in that gairden.’

  ‘Come on, come on. Ye’ll be a lot harder pushed in three weeks. Work to be done.’

  Frankie was on his bike and going. Dan had no option but to labour after him. He ran beyond the houses into a dawn that was at first just a little light spilled on the air, then seeping imperceptibly till it was staining the sky into a marl of changing colours. Hedgerows rediscovered green and fields took shape. He found a rhythm and was trotting, not easily, through miles
of morning. He was carefully asking his body questions and the answers were unsure but optimistic. He wasn’t fit but he knew that the fitness was there, under its coating of rust, just needing the effort. He gave it a little just now but not too much.

  Sometimes on the hills he would pass Frankie who would have to get off and walk. They passed each other with insulting comments. Once, from behind, he heard Frankie swearing. Looking back, he saw that the chain of the bike had come off and Frankie was struggling with it. Dan Scoular spun laughing on the road and carried on. He vaulted the gate below the hill of Farquhar’s Farm, slithered up the slope and collapsed at the top. He could see the town from where he was. From here it looked like not a bad place to be. In the clarity that relaxation from exertion can give, he thought it was good here, good the way it was, himself aware of the presence of his strength and the town there waiting, a place where the people he loved were. It was good. Who needed complications? Then he heard Frankie White shouting, ‘Dan!’

  He saw him appear on the road below, pedalling with difficulty and looking around, confused. But he would find him. Dan didn’t help, just waited till he was found. Frankie left his bike against the gate, climbed over and scrambled up the hill.

  ‘Right! Up, big man,’ he said.

  Dan was puzzled.

  ‘On yer feet. Phase Two of the training programme.’

  Frankie was moving around with his oil-stained hands held out in front of him, palms towards Dan. Dan stood up and watched him.

  ‘You try tae hit ma hands,’ Frankie said. ‘But only ma hands. You watch. Ah can move like a ghost. Don’t worry. Ah’ll let ma hands ride wi’ the punches.’

  Dan began at a reluctant shuffle but soon they were moving briskly around the flat top of the hill. Frankie was dodging and weaving and moving his hands about with bewildering speed and Dan Scoular was purpling the palms of them with hooks and jabs and crosses that seemed to pluck their force out of thin air, just happened, needing no time to build their whipping trajectories. They built up a desperate momentum until Frankie’s hands got their own signals crossed and his right palm was against his own shoulder when Dan Scoular hit it. He went down so fast he did a backward roll down the hill. There was a moment of silence as he lay still. Then his voice came, very small and pretending to be calm.

  ‘Fine. Ah was meanin’ to take a break now anyway.’ Then he groaned alarmingly. ‘Ah just didny mean it to be ma hand.’

  He rolled over on his back and Dan sat down beside him, laughing.

  ‘Fast Frankie?’ Dan said through his laughter. ‘Trainin’ for a fight? This has been some start. Ah nearly get etten alive wi’ a dug. You canny even get a bike that goes right. Then Ah mistake ye for a punchbag. We better own up. We’re Laurel an’ Hardy at this game.’

  They both lay back, looking up at the sky and laughing helplessly. The idea of it started to build between them.

  ‘We could offer tae fight the Marx Brothers,’ Frankie said.

  ‘There’s too many of them for us.’

  ‘Ah’d be all right as long as there was no punchin’ allowed.’

  ‘Ah think we better tell Matt Mason we were only kiddin’.’

  The mention of the name was like a lapse of taste in a comedy routine. It killed the laughter. Frankie White sat up and plucked a stalk of grass. He felt cold now that he had stopped sweating. Dan Scoular leaned on his elbow and looked back towards the town again.

  ‘Who is this man, Frankie?’ he said.

  ‘Who?’

  The one Ah’m supposed to fight.’

  ‘Ah’ve seen him about a bit. Ah don’t know. Ah’d say he’s about six feet. Bit heavier than you. Maybe fifteen stones. They say he’s good. But he’s gettin’ on all right. Some reckon he’s past it.’ He slapped Dan on the leg. ‘You’ll take him, Dan. Don’t worry. As long as ye’re fit. And you’ll be fit.’

  ‘That’s not what Ah asked ye, Frankie.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He’s Cutty Dawson.’

  ‘But who’s Cutty Dawson? What does he do? Does he have a family? What kinda man is he?’

  ‘Christ, Dan. How would Ah know? What d’ye want to know that for? Ye’re not gonny be his pen-pal. Ye’re gonny batter the shite out ‘im. The less ye know about him the better.’

  ‘Ah just wonder what he’s like.’

  ‘Dan, listen. You’re not getting paid to be a private detective. Don’t ask. Just fight. Just as long as Cutty’s handlers know his blood group. So that when they rush him tae hospital, there’s no time wasted.’

  They didn’t feel so close any more. Frankie chewed his stalk of grass and stared down towards the road. He was grateful that it led away from Thornbank. He was here to earn some money. He didn’t need complications.

  Dan felt embarrassed again by their track-suits, a pretence of unified professionalism. They weren’t engaged in preparation for the same event at all. Frankie was training him for Frankie, for the serving of a purpose in Frankie’s life. Dan wasn’t sure what he was training himself for but he would have to find out on his own.

  Their previous laughter, which had seemed like camaraderie at the time, was in retrospect like the nervousness of strangers. It left a gloom on them. The cloud that went across the sun felt like a private arrangement.

  There is an abandoned quarry near Thornbank, one of those mis-hewn, unfinished monuments to industry with which nature is left to improvise. It had at first grown grass and trees around its rim that attractively concealed the sheerness of its sides till you might unsuspectingly find yourself poised over a fifty-foot drop into a pool of black water, depth unknown. It is filled in now, but not before a few children had drunk the black water. Jack Ferguson, Dan’s best friend at primary school, had been one of them. Every time Dan passed the place, Jack’s death acknowledged him, seemed waiting for his own. Dan passed the quarry every day in training.

  It was only one of many places on his route where ghosts of his childhood confronted, not reassuringly, the man he was trying to become. There was the park where he had played football as a boy through long, dishevelled games that could reach exotic scores like 25-18 and where the numbers playing could swell so much that sometimes, having the ball, you felt as if you were trying to dribble through a city. He passed every morning the tree where the rope had broken and catapulted Andy Mills into a coma from which he emerged asking what month it was. There was the small wood in which he and Sadie McAvoy had explored each other through a series of compulsively repeated evenings until they worked out how to get it right and, in the first orgasm he had had in company, he felt like a Catherine wheel going off and wondered where the pieces of himself might land.

  Memory feeding corrosively on the future and Dan living still in the countryside where he had been born, he was running every day through an intensifying awareness of his own transience, through an argument with his past he wasn’t sure he could resolve. Occasionally, his self-doubts referred themselves to Frankie White in his need to bounce them off some surface, no matter how hollow.

  ‘You notice somethin’?’ he said one day at the end of a run. ‘You notice how much rubbish there is around?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Frankie was preoccupied with his own thoughts.

  ‘The places we pass. People are dumpin’ rubbish anywhere these days.’

  ‘It’s not any different from it ever was, is it?’

  ‘Oh, it is. It never used tae be like that. Just dumped at the side of the road. As if they didny care much any more. This place is different.’

  ‘Maybe not. Maybe ye just notice it more because we’re out and about so much.’

  ‘Naw. It’s different.’

  Frankie White shrugged and Dan Scoular didn’t enlarge on what he was trying to say. Those casual scatterings of litter meant something to him he wouldn’t have found it easy to translate. They were like the place rejecting its sense of itself and therefore his own sense of it as well. People said you couldn’t go back.
More than that, it seemed to him, you couldn’t stay. He wondered if he had been trying to stay in a place that was no longer there. The suspicion of its absence made him question if it ever had been there. He remembered Betty’s disbelief in it early in their marriage.

  A scene had stayed in his mind from their time in the rented flat. They had been sitting on the carpet in front of the fire. He was drinking from a can of beer. She was sipping coffee. It was one of those moments when a theme develops spontaneously out of random conversation. He had stumbled on her incredulity about his past and he had started to feed it scraps from his memory.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ became her refrain.

  ‘Naw, it’s true.’

  ‘You don’t expect me to believe that.’

  ‘Cross ma heart an’ hope for to die. Better still, Ah’ll cross yours. It’s more fun that way. There was another bloke. Sammy Ramsay. Stayed down the road from us. Know what he did one night? He had fags but no matches. Right? Desperate for a smoke. All the shops are shut. All the other houses in darkness. Know what Sammy does? True. Stands on a chair, holds his head up to the light wi’ the fag in his mouth. Smashes the light bulb. Tryin’ to get a light off the filament. That’s gen. Pickin’ Mazda out his heid for a fortnight, he was. The bold Sammy.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Then there was Freddie Taylor. Lookin’ for eight draws on the treble chance. Got to seven. Waitin’ for the eighth and a fortune. A home win. He fired the wireless out through the windae on to the front green. We were a passionate people.’

  ‘I think you make them up.’

  Now he wondered himself if he had made something up, not the substance of the incidents but the significance they had come to have for him. His former sense of his past seemed to him now about as incredible, as untrustworthy as it had to Betty. He found himself questioning the shared identity he had found there. But even as he questioned it, he was confronted daily with the stubbornness of place, the hauntingness of its familiar associations.