The Big Man

by William McIlvanney

  With the dressing-table mirror tilted up, he combed his hair carefully. The bruising on his face had almost gone. There was a slight yellowness around one eye. He didn’t hear her coming in. She spoke from the doorway of the bedroom and when he glanced up he knew from her stillness that she had been watching him for some time.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Oh not again,’ he said. He was smiling. ‘Do we need this rigmarole every Sunday night?’

  Her expression refused to join him in the joke. She stared at him and the fear in her eyes shamed his attempted flippancy. It was a fear he shared and their mutual acknowledgment of it estranged them from the room. What had been familiar became sinister. The bed looked cold and uninviting. The mobile of metal butterflies hanging from the ceiling found wind where there was none that they could feel and it span, clashing softly. The accoutrements on the dressing-table were an array of vanities.

  The routine that had carried them through a week broke down in that moment and this was as far as it had brought them. They faced each other across a bleak admission. Dan fingered some loose hairs from his comb in a pretence of normalcy. Neither of them was convinced.

  ‘You can’t go there,’ Betty said.

  ‘Come on, Betty. Where else would Ah go?’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘It’s a thing Ah do. Ah haven’t got much. Nobody’s goin’ to make me settle for less.’

  She looked wildly round the room as if it was a trap.

  ‘I wish we could go away from here.’

  ‘Where would we go? The Bahamas? Nah, Betty. This is where we live. So do a lot of other good people. We should be trying to improve this place, not go elsewhere.’

  ‘But this is the most likely night. If they’re looking for you, this would be the night. And the pub would be the place. Not tonight, Dan. Wait even a week.’

  ‘They’re more likely to wait. Till things’ve died down a bit. Tonight’s probably as safe as it’s goin’ tae get.’

  ‘But what if they’re there?’

  ‘Then Ah better be as well. If they’re there and Ah don’t go. What d’you think they’ll do? Leave it at that and go home? They would come here, Betty. Ah’m not havin’ that. Not at any price. Ah’m goin’.’

  ‘We could tell the police. I’ve been thinking about that. I think we should tell Scott Laidlaw.’

  Dan winked at her.

  ‘Ah already have. He’s told his brother.’

  ‘You told Scott?’

  ‘Of course Ah did. Ah don’t want to take any chances Ah don’t have tae take. If Jack Laidlaw lets it be known discreetly that he’s aware o’ this, should be some kinda deterrent.’

  ‘But did you tell him you took money?’

  ‘Skated round that a bit. Ah mean, that’s theft. But Ah don’t think Matt Mason’ll be keen tae file a complaint.’

  The mention of the name broke through the numbness Betty had temporarily gained by talking about the practicalities of it. She heard the faint sounds of the television programme the boys were watching downstairs. She tried to think of something else to say but couldn’t. The banal logic of Dan’s reasons defeated her. Standing in the room, staring at her make-up accessories, hearing studio laughter from downstairs, she was horrified at the ordinariness of the terrible. Their lives were overhung by the will of others and the children were watching television and her husband was preparing to go out to the pub and any moment their right to the life they had could be foreclosed on. And who was to help them?

  ‘It’s going to be all right, Bette,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Dan. Who do you think you’re speaking to? One of the children?’

  ‘I just think it’ll be all right.’

  ‘Do you?’

  She crossed towards the dressing-table, where her handbag was lying. She opened the bag and took out a folded form. It took Dan a few seconds to recognise the life insurance policy he had arranged during the week.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ he asked.

  ‘Where you hid it.’

  He had put it in the plastic bag where they kept such things, stored in a downstairs cupboard. Knowing that if anything hap pened to him she would have to look there, he had secreted it among a lot of other documents. While he was doing it, he had found the notes to his wedding speech, and the two of them held together in his hand, scribbled notes and precisely worded type, had been like a measure of the distance he had travelled since that time: from vague aspirations to a final contract, worked out in hard terms and offering no loopholes.

  ‘Ah didn’t hide it, Betty,’ he said. ‘Ah just put it in a safe place.’

  ‘Was that all? I’ve had that in my handbag since yesterday, waiting for you to mention it first. Why didn’t you tell me, Dan?’

  ‘Ah would’ve done.’

  ‘When? As a dramatic death-bed confession? Why did you do this?’

  ‘Seemed like a good time to do it. Ah’m never goin’ to be fitter, am Ah? That’s the time tae let the medical men have a look at ye. An’ Ah’ve got some money.’

  ‘And you don’t expect to live long?’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ He flexed his shoulders and winked at her but she didn’t respond. ‘Strong as a bull. But there’s always the wee heart attacks an’ runaway buses waitin’ to have a go at ye. Betty. You’ve always been on at me to think of the future an’ make some provision.’

  He cuddled her and she put the piece of paper back in her handbag and they came downstairs. With the boys watching the television and Dan standing at the table with his jerkin on and discovering something in the paper that appeared to interest him and herself laying out some things for ironing, Betty felt there wasn’t much more to be said. They both knew the fragility of where they were. They shared it beyond speech. It was their element. You didn’t spend time discussing air, you just breathed it. This was normalcy, this preoccupation with small tasks in the face of possible death, this commitment to a marriage you weren’t sure could last, this silent hysteria at the injustice of things. For Dan’s sake, she tried to contain the panic that threatened her. But when he crossed and put his hands on the back of the boys’ necks by way of cheerio and then made to go out, she followed him into the hall.

  ‘Dan,’ she said.

  He turned and smiled at her.

  ‘You’ve got two hours.’

  His eyes widened.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Two hours. All right?’

  ‘Ye mean in the pub?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  The smile enlarged.

  ‘Ye kiddin’, Bette? What a hen peck ye’re turnin’ me into. Well, can Ah bring one of ma pals in to play when Ah come back?’

  ‘I’m serious, Dan. You feel you’ve got to do this, all right. I’ll accept it in a limited way. But if you’re not back by that time, I’m going to get May in from next door and come up there myself.’

  ‘All right, Bette. But Ah think you’re just lookin’ for an excuse for a bevvy.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  They laughed quietly and embraced. He felt her holding him tightly.

  ‘It’s got its advantages, this situation,’ he said into her hair. ‘Every time ye go to the pub ye say farewell as if ye were emigratin’. Ah like it fine.’

  Outside, his last remark stayed with him. There was some truth in it. Everything felt heightened for him. He admitted to himself that he did think tonight was probably the most likely time. The awareness of his own danger gave everything around him a sharper edge, the way the threat of losing something intensifies your sense of its worth. Walking to the pub became a small experience. He appreciated the stillness of the evening, the lighted windows of the houses that colonised the darkness. At the same time, he was tense with the fear of what might be ahead.

  Some stars were out. They gave perspective to the vastness of the sky, enlarged the night. He was reminded of the moment before the fight with Cutty, his awareness of how big the day was and how unnecess
arily small their preoccupation was within it. He felt the same about where he was now.

  But he accepted it. All experience was distorting lenses. What mattered was that, through maintaining the act of choice, you kept the freedom of your imagination to interpret the distortions. All anybody ultimately had the right to was their own vision. He had his, won from his own experience. He would abide the pain of his own findings.

  He had chosen to live with the threat of Matt Mason’s power and in the choice he had transformed that power. Matt Mason’s power might be planning to determine the meaning of Dan Scoular’s life, what significance it would have, perhaps even when it would end. But Dan Scoular was determining the significance of Matt Mason’s power. By walking towards it, he put it in perspective. It wasn’t master, it was servant to a truth it didn’t realise, a truth Dan Scoular knew. It was Dan Scoular’s sense of his own life given shape. The shape was already there and Matt Mason was deluding himself that he could make it different. So every day was a threat. Wasn’t it always?

  He thought of his father’s life. His father, he thought, had taken this walk every day, with so many others. The only difference was in the awareness. He felt he was taking the walk for all of them again but this time with an understanding that was his gift to their baffled experience. He felt them with him. All that had happened between his walk here of a month ago and now was the truth. It lay in the tension between imposed experience and the vision that transformed it. That tension increased the nearer he came to the pub.

  When he pushed open the door, the pub burst on his eyes, a sudden gift of colour and noise and smoke and warmth and danger. He was surprised how busy it was. Every table was occupied and there were several men at the bar. Voices greeted him and he tried to acknowledge them. By the time he reached the bar, a pint was waiting.

  This one’s on me, Dan,’ Alan said.

  He was given his space. Drinking, he looked round in a way that was a habit with a new, heightened awareness concealed in it. All the faces seemed familiar, belonged there. The domino players had a fourth and at another table a second game was happening. He felt his tension tremor, settle for the moment. People at the bar to order a drink or on their way past to the lavatory would touch him or speak in the passing, congratulating him in a way that suggested they didn’t just mean on winning a fight, or they would stop and talk for a time. Wullie Mairshall was one of them.

  ‘Aye, Dan.’

  ‘Wullie.’

  ‘Well done, big man. Ma money was always on ye.’

  ‘That was a chancy bet, Wullie. Ah was lucky tae get out alive, never mind win.’

  ‘Nut at all, Dan. Ye were never in any danger.’

  ‘Ah wish somebody had told me that.’

  ‘That ither business, Dan?’

  Dan looked at him and took a moment to know what he meant, as if the question were in an archaic language Dan could barely recognise. He saw Wullie staring out from his fixed position while everything around him was shifting and sliding. He was like a man still looking for landmarks in the open sea.

  ‘Forget it, Wullie,’ Dan said gently. ‘Ah don’t live there any more.’

  ‘Ye mean you an’ Betty –’

  Dan shook his head and smiled.

  ‘Betty an’ me are fine. Ah mean all that other stuff’s dead an’ gone. You see you bury it. It’s ma wife’s business an’ mine. All right?’

  ‘Certainly, certainly. No offence . . .’

  Dan saw Wullie’s lips about to shape the familiar ‘big man’ and then abandon the sound. It was a mildly eerie feeling, like seeing your name erased from a commemorative tablet. As Wullie moved away, a worshipper who has found the shrine empty, Dan knew a just sense of himself in Wullie’s disappointment. To be still Betty’s man was a status greater than Wullie had wanted to bestow. He had never been who Wullie thought him to be. He was just glad to have discovered who he was, tense though that made him, coiling every time the pub door opened.

  When it was Vince Mabon who came in, Dan watched him check the pub, still holding the door, and nod to someone outside. Frankie White followed him in. The presence of Frankie tautened Dan, as if he might be an outrunner. He had no substance in himself, Dan knew, but he suggested it, like the shadow of a hawk across a field.

  Frankie was performing camaraderie as he came through the bar and Dan found it difficult to feel angry with him, even remembering his travelling bag sitting on the hospital steps, as if telling him he had been evicted from Frankie’s life. You couldn’t ask Frankie to stand by you. He was on the run from himself, had been all his life. Yet watching him improvise himself from person to person, Dan was moved by him. He was like a busker, earning his sense of himself from what other people could spare.

  He came up and stood beside Dan while Vince Mabon stood on Dan’s other side, as if they were putting him in brackets. Dan thought at first they were two strange people to be together and then thought perhaps they weren’t, since one fed materially off people like himself and the other intellectually.

  ‘Dan,’ Frankie said. ‘Can Ah buy ye a drink?’

  Thanks, Frankie. But Ah’ve got a pint.’

  ‘A whisky then? After all, the fightin’s over.’

  ‘Is it? No thanks.’

  Frankie seemed awkward for a moment, perhaps feeling the glibness of his mouth had said the wrong thing. He bought a whisky for himself and a pint for Vince Mabon.

  ‘Dan. Ah’m sorry for leavin’ ye like that. But Ah had no choice.’

  ‘Forget it.’

  Dan sipped at his pint.

  ‘Ah mean that amounted to stealin’ Matt Mason’s car. An’ then there was the money. Ah had tae get that car back. Ah had no choice.’

  ‘It’s all right. Ye just did whit ye do, Frankie.’

  ‘As it was, Ah had tae make up a story.’

  ‘Ah’m sure it was good. Ah hope Ah didn’t disappoint ye by no’ hangin’ about the hospital till ye got back.’

  ‘Ah didn’t tell them that, Dan. Ah said Ah dropped ye in the town. Ah said ye told me you had Matt’s permission.’

  Dan felt the ambiguity of the moment, both the strangeness and the naturalness of their conversation held in balance. This was Frankie White, who came from Thornbank, often drank in here. This was a reminder of his possible death. This was a half-hearted friend, a half-hearted betrayer. This was the tension of threat alternating with the relaxation of ordinariness, like a prolonged experience of the moment when the whirr that stops the heart is just a bird rising suddenly from bushes. Dan felt the naturalness of danger, its ubiquity once you realised its nature.

  ‘Does that mean they don’t know Cutty got the money?’

  ‘Don’t know, Dan. Ah don’t think so. Haven’t heard too much. Ah mean, they’re no’ exactly invitin’ me to join the inner circle. But as far as Ah know, they haven’t looked near Cutty. He should be all right. One thing Ah can tell ye, Dan. They reckon his eyesight’s goin’ to be all right.’

  ‘Huh. Where does that leave you, Dan?’

  Vince Mabon had spoken for the first time. Dan looked at him.

  ‘It leaves me where Ah’m standin’, Vince.’

  ‘But Cutty’s going to be fine.’

  ‘That’s great. What else could it be?’

  Frankie, with nostrils like a thoroughbred for changes in the atmosphere, intervened.

  ‘What Vince means, Dan, is ye maybe feel ye jumped the gun a bit. Ah mean what ye did was spur o’ the minute.’

  ‘Ah know what Vince means, Frankie. He’s no’ that intellectual that Ah can’t understand him. But do you know what Ah mean? Ah’m glad for Cutty. Ye think he’s lettin’ me down by gettin’ his sight back? Ah didny just do it for Cutty. Ah did it for the two of us. It was maybe spur o’ the minute. But it was good spur o’ the minute. Ah’d been practisin’ for it all ma life.’

  Vince shook his head. Frankie seemed disappointed.

  ‘Maybe Ah’ve wasted ma time comin’ here,’ Frankie said.

/>   ‘It depends what ye came for, Frankie,’ Dan said.

  ‘To get you out.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Matt Mason’s lookin’ for ye, Dan. That’s the word.’

  ‘It would be, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘He’s lookin’ for ye.’

  ‘He knows where Ah am.’

  ‘It would be better if he didn’t. Dan, it could be the night. Ah’m takin’ a chance just bein’ with you. But when Ah go out this pub, Ah’m havin’ it away on ma toes. Like, well away. What about you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Dan. Don’t ye understand what Ah’m tryin’ to say?’

  ‘Frankie, Ah don’t think you understand what ye’re tryin’ to say. An’ Ah don’t think ye will. Ever. Where is it ye’re goin’?’

  ‘London!’ Frankie said as if it was an incontrovertible argument.

  ‘What good’ll that do?’

  ‘Ah’ll be safe there. So would you. Ah know some people. Ah’ve got a few quid. Enough for the two of us. For a while at least. What d’ye say? Don’t be a mug.’

  Don’t be a mug. Dan had often wondered about people’s dread of being a mug, not getting it right, as if it was possible to get it right. He suspected that from the time Jack Ferguson had died in the quarry he had known you didn’t get it right. If one person you loved could die, it couldn’t be right. All you could do was try to get it wrong on your own terms; as honestly as you knew how. He thought of some of the times he had known people come together to lament a misguided life, a man on the drink or a woman who had thrown herself away. They were lamenting themselves by proxy, he had thought. For what did those who were sensible have that was so much better? Mortality was incurable, or didn’t they know? Was it better to have a heart like a sewn purse and a life not so much spent as usured into death?

  ‘Where’s safe?’ he said.

  ‘London’s safe! Ye comin’?’

  ‘Ah live here, Frankie.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Does anybody know that?’

  Frankie took down his drink.