by Louise Welsh
His first impression was of darkness and music cut through with the scent of stale beer and something else, a sharp tang that was close to sweat. The couches that lined the room were empty and only a couple of the bar stools were taken. But either the pub’s clientele favoured late lunches, or the management were simply optimistic business would pick up, because they had laid on entertainment.
On a stage in the far corner a tall woman in a G-string lazily circled a silver pole. The dancer’s face remained blank, but Murray’s entrance seemed to be the cue for her to up-tempo. She gripped the pole with both hands and launched herself into a spin that lifted both feet from the air and twirled her into a kaleidoscope of
Breasts
Bottom
Breasts
Bottom
Breasts
Bottom
She hooked a leg around the prop, slowing her progress again and slid into the splits. Murray restrained a polite urge to clap. No one else seemed impressed. The barman glanced at Murray over the newspaper he’d leant against the beer taps, and the men on the bar stools kept their eyes on their pints, all except for a compact man in a grey sweat-suit who turned and looked straight at him.
The dancer resumed her slow gyrations and Murray made his way to the bar, readjusting his rucksack. He’d always liked Lyn. Would meeting her after his defection from Jack’s exhibition really be worse than a drink in this dump? But talking to her would mean talking about his brother, and he couldn’t face that yet.
The music slid into a series of judders. The dancer ignored it for a moment, then when no one moved to remedy the noise shouted, ‘Malky, are you going to fix that CD or do you want me to start fucking breakdancing?’
The barman roused himself from his newspaper, took the disc from the player and wiped it against a bar towel.
‘I’d like to see you fucking moonwalking. On the moon.’
His voice was too low to reach the stage, but one of the men laughed and the girl threw the barman a look that promised later suffering.
‘You’ve blotted your copybook there,’ the man said.
The barman shrugged his shoulders and slid the disc back in the machine. Sade started singing about a smooth operator and the girl began weaving her hips, keeping her movements close and contained, as if dancing inside an invisible box.
Murray slid his hand into his jeans pocket and found a two-pound coin.
‘Coke, please.’
The grey man on the bar stool turned and gave him the smallest of smiles. His voice was low, but Murray had no trouble hearing him over the beat of the music.
‘Are you a member, sir?’
Murray took in the uncarpeted floor, the couches draped with cheap cotton throws, the stubbled bartender back in the sports page of his tabloid.
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘No problem. I can sign you in.’
‘Cheers.’
He hoped the man wouldn’t expect a drink in exchange.
‘There’s a ten pounds entrance fee for non-members.’
Murray felt his eyes drifting back towards the stage.
He forced himself to look at the bouncer.
‘I wasn’t planning on staying.’
‘Fair enough.’ The man slid from his stool and put a firm grip on Murray’s elbow, but his tone was as courteous as Professor Fergus Baine correcting a departmental rival’s slip in literary theory. ‘I’ll see you to the door.’
‘I mean I’m only stopping a minute.’
‘In that case it’ll be a tenner.’
‘The thing is,’ Murray gently disengaged himself and leant against the bar, striving for a mateyness he’d long known was outside his repertoire, ‘there’s a girl I want to avoid.’
The barman raised his eyes from the paper.
‘I ken the feeling.’
Murray smiled at him, keen to win an ally.
‘So if you’d just let me stop here for a moment, three minutes at the most, you’d be doing me a huge favour. I’m happy to buy a drink.’
He opened his palm, revealing the two-pound coin within. It looked pathetic and he closed his fingers round it again.
‘No problem.’ The bouncer’s voice was slick with the complacency of a school bully extorting dinner money from a swot. ‘You can stay for as long or as short a time as you want, but the fee remains the same, ten pounds.’ His smile showed surprisingly white teeth. ‘We accept all major credit cards.’
Murray wondered if Lyn and her companion had already passed by, but there had been a vintage vinyl shop between them and the pub. The man in the wheelchair had looked the type to linger at its window.
‘I’m happy to buy a pint, but you can’t really expect me to pay ten quid for one drink?’
The bouncer put his hand back on Murray’s elbow.
‘Be more like fourteen quid, mate, the drinks aren’t free. Anyway, it depends how much you want to avoid her.’
They were approaching the exit now. Murray made one last appeal.
‘What harm would it do?’
‘Immeasurable, mate.’ The man nodded towards the girl on stage. ‘Strictly-Cum-Dancing would report me to the boss, and I’d be out on my ear.’ He opened the door. ‘Nothing personal.’ And gave Murray a gentle shove out into the sunshine.
Murray scanned the street. Lyn and her companion were walking away from the pub, their backs towards him. He was safe. He grinned at the bouncer. ‘I’ll let you get back to the Ritz then.’
The man gave Murray a good-natured smile.
‘Is that her there, the skinny piece with Ironside?’
‘No.’
Murray started to walk away, just as the bouncer shouted, ‘Hey, doll, he’s over here.’
Lyn turned. A look of confusion clouded her face, but she raised a hand in greeting. She said something to her companion and started to walk back to where Murray now waited.
The grey man grinned. ‘Next time, pay the entrance fee.’ He let the door swing behind him, shutting out the darkness and music, leaving Murray to face his brother’s girlfriend.
‘Hello, stranger.’
Lyn’s expression was out of kilter with the jaunty greeting and Murray wondered if she’d noticed what kind of pub he’d been in. Usually when they met they kissed, but neither of them made the first move and the moment was lost.
‘Hi.’ He readjusted his heavy bag, fighting the urge to take it from his back. ‘How are you?’
‘Good.’ Lyn pushed a strand of loose hair away. The sun was in her face and she narrowed her eyes as she looked up at him. He was reminded of a photograph Jack had taken of her wearing the same expression, battling the light. ‘I didn’t know you were coming through.’
Her voice was free of reproach, but he felt it anyway.
‘I’m here most days at the moment, working up at the library.’
‘How’s it going?’
‘Aye, fine.’ He sought for something else to say. ‘I’m getting into it.’
Lyn turned towards the man in the chair.
‘Frankie, this is my brother-in-law, Murray. Murray, this is Frankie. We were just on our way to the shops.’
Frankie pulled his hat up on his forehead and stared Murray out.
‘Any good in there?’ He nodded back towards the pub.
Lyn said, ‘Frankie.’ Half-cajoling, half-warning, and Murray realised that his visit wasn’t a secret.
‘No.’ He tried to keep it light. ‘Ten pounds entrance fee and the music was too loud.’ He looked at Lyn. ‘I went in by mistake.’
She glanced at the A-board outside on the street advertising: LAP DANCING, FANTASY CABINS, EXECUTIVE BOOTHS, EXOTIC DANCERS, OFFICE DOs AND STAG PARTIES WELCOME.
‘Easy done.’
‘No disabled access.’ Frankie zizzed the chair into life. ‘That’s against the law.’ He rolled back and forth, letting the tyres hiss his impatience. Come on, come on, come on, come on.
A wheel nudged Murray’s foot and he took a sharp step
back.
‘Frankie.’ Lyn’s voice held an unfamiliar, scolding edge. ‘We’re only going to Lidl’s. It’ll still be there if we spare a moment to say hello.’
‘But some of those great offers won’t be, Lyn.’ Frankie glanced up at Murray. Standing, he might have been the taller of the two. ‘No offence, man, but you know how it is.’
Murray didn’t, but he nodded anyway.
‘I wouldn’t want to hold you back.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Frankie snapped the electric chair around and careered ahead.
‘Jesus fuck.’ There was a break in Lyn’s voice that might have been amusement or despair. ‘Watch him go. I’d like to get my hands on the genius that issued him with that thing.’
‘They must be cracking offers. Should you go with him?’
‘He’s a grown man.’
‘Difficult customer?’
‘Easy customers needn’t apply.’
‘Aye, I suppose.’ He nodded back at the pub. ‘I really didn’t notice it was a go-go bar before I went in.’
‘Go-go bar.’ Lyn laughed. ‘You’ve some turn of phrase.’ She looked beyond him, following Frankie’s progress with her eyes, before turning her attention back to Murray. ‘It wouldn’t be any of my business if you did.’
‘But I didn’t.’
‘Must have been a shock to the system.’
‘A wee bit. I was looking for somewhere to get a bowl of soup.’ They laughed together and for the first time he was glad they’d met. Lyn glanced back in the direction Frankie had taken. He was a block ahead now, talking to a Big Issue vendor. Frankie reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and the vendor sparked them both up.
‘I’d better go after him, our bus is about due. Have you got time to walk to the stop with me?’
It was the opposite direction from the one he’d intended taking, but Murray nodded and they started to follow slowly in Frankie’s wake, like parents who had let their child run ahead on a weekend walk.
‘So is Frankie your main man at the moment?’
‘There’s a horrible thought, but now you mention it, I do seem to spend more time with him than I do with anyone else, including Jack.’
‘How is Jack?’
‘Why don’t you ask him yourself?’
‘I will, when I have a moment.’
Lyn sighed.
‘I’ll tell him you were asking after him.’
‘Thanks.’ Murray hesitated. ‘Could you tell him that I might …’
‘Oh, shit.’
‘What?’
Lyn started to run.
‘That’s our bus.’
Ahead of them Frankie stuck out his arm and a maroon double-decker slowed to a halt. Lyn was fast, but she was too short to be a sprinter. Murray shouldered his cursed bag and broke into a dash. The bus’s suspension sank until its platform was level with the pavement, and its doors concertinaed open. Frankie raised his arm in farewell to his friend and started to steer himself aboard. Murray shouted, ‘Hoi!’
The vendor saw Murray and put a foot on the bus’s platform, holding it there.
‘Cheers.’ Murray’s words were a whisper. He reached into his pocket and his hand closed on the same two-pound coin he’d tried to spend on a Coke. It was too much, but he pressed it into the vendor’s palm anyway.
‘Nae bother.’ The man stepped free of the bus. ‘They’re not going anywhere.’
He offered him a paper, but Murray shook his head and climbed aboard.
The driver had unlatched the door of his cab and managed to open it a crack, but Frankie had parked his chair against it, blocking his exit. Murray smelt smoke, saw the lit cigarette in Frankie’s hand and understood. The driver sank back into his seat, casting an envious glance at Frankie’s Mayfair.
‘Listen, mate, I’m off shift at five whether I get to the depot or not, but there’s folks here got things to do and you’re stopping them getting to where they’re going and doing them. Why not let them get on their way?’
‘You heard the driver.’ An elderly woman leaned out from her place halfway down the aisle. ‘Get rid of the cigarette or sling your hook.’
Frankie turned his chair to face his audience.
‘Do you know the first person to ban tobacco? Adolf Hitler.’ Frankie drew forth his pack of Mayfairs and slid another cigarette free. ‘Sometimes folks can be too obedient.’
An old man got to his feet. ‘I’m betting it was that kind of lip landed you in that chair.’ He shifted his shopping bags and seemed about to go down the aisle. But the old women around him broke into choruses of ‘Well said, Mr Prentice’ and ‘You tell him, Jim’, and he stayed where he was, chest puffed up beneath his anorak, an elderly pasha surrounded by his well-wrapped-up harem.
‘What’s going on?’
The run had freed Lyn’s hair from its clasp. It burst around her face in a riot of tangles. Her cheeks were flushed, though whether from the exertion or annoyance it was hard to tell.
Murray turned towards her, but it was Frankie who spoke.
‘I was holding the bus for you.’
He took the cigarette from his mouth, expertly nipped its lit end and placed it back in the pack.
The driver shut the doors and restarted the engine.
‘Fuck’s sake, I would have waited if you’d asked.’
‘Aye, right.’ Frankie backed his chair into the space by the door, slotting himself next to a toddler in a buggy. The child gave him a baleful look and Frankie nodded back. ‘How you doing?’
‘Sorry.’ Lyn scrabbled in her purse and put the fares in the slot.
‘Don’t apologise, dear.’ The driver issued the tickets, smiling sadly like a man who’d seen it all now. ‘You’ve got my sympathy if you’re shackled to that article.’
Murray said, ‘She’s not …’
But the driver’s eyes were on the road, the bus gliding from the stop, just as Murray remembered he hadn’t intended on travelling anywhere except the library.
In the end he went round the supermarket with them too, listening to Lyn and Frankie discussing the relative merits of the produce on offer. Lyn asked him if he didn’t want to get a few things for himself, but he shook his head. He wouldn’t know where to start. Frankie, on the other hand, seemed to know exactly what he was doing.
Frankie rolled to a halt by the wine shelves, scanning them with an expert eye. ‘I think we’ll have a couple of bottles of that cheeky burgundy on special, please, Lyn.’
Murray noticed Frankie checking out Lyn’s rear as she reached up to the top shelf to retrieve the wine.
‘You enjoy cooking?’
‘Beats starving.’
Lyn put the bottles amongst their other groceries and they continued their slow patrol of the shelves.
‘Frankie’s a bit of a gourmet.’
‘Food’s one of the few pleasures left to me.’
Lyn snorted. ‘Plus the booze, fags and all the rest.’
‘All the rest? Are you offering?’
Lyn gave the wheelchair a small push Murray was sure contravened professional guidelines. She looked at Murray.
‘So tell me more about how the research is going.’
It occurred to him that she was humouring him the way she’d just humoured Frankie, the way she probably humoured Jack.
‘It’s dull. You know what I’m like when I get onto that, a train-spotting stamp-collector.’
Murray picked a bottle of oil from a shelf. It had red and black peppercorns suspended in it. He turned the bottle on its side and watched them slide slowly through the yellow viscous, like migrating stars in a steady firmament.
‘Come on, you know I like hearing about your mad poet.’
The oil was the same pale yellow as lager. He remembered a night in the pub years ago, Lyn pouring the remains of her pint over Jack in response to something she’d deemed sexist. He remembered the surprise of it, Jack’s expression and his own astonished shock of admiration. He remem
bered laughing then taking a deep draught of his own drink before drenching his brother with the dregs. Their drunken dash to outrun the bartender’s curse – Yous’re all barred!
He put the oil back on the shelf.
‘I don’t think Archie was mad, not at the start anyway. Sure, he behaved crazily sometimes, but from what I’m hearing he tanked it. I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t drugs somewhere in the mix too.’
‘You sound almost hopeful.’
‘It’s in the past. I can’t fix it. All I can do is make sure I get the facts right.’
Lyn’s voice was soft.
‘Can’t you cut your brother’s exhibition the same slack?’
The comparison bewildered him.
‘As long as I’m around, our dad isn’t in the past. I’m surprised Jack doesn’t feel the same way.’
‘He does, Murray. He just has a different way of expressing it.’
Perhaps Lyn sensed the pressure at the back of his eyes, because she took another tin from the shelf and asked again if he was sure he didn’t need anything.
*
The three of them waited together at the checkout behind an elderly couple. The old man placed his wire shopping basket at the end of the counter and his wife set four tins of dog food, a packet of cornflakes and a bottle of Three Barrels brandy on the conveyor belt. It scrolled forwards and Lyn started to unload Frankie’s trolley.
‘You had something you wanted me to tell Jack.’
‘Did I?’
He didn’t want to discuss anything in front of the other man.
‘Yes, just before the bus came. It got lost in the commotion.’ ‘It wasn’t important.’
The cashier started to check their stuff through and Lyn and Frankie began bagging it. Murray moved to help, but Frank said, ‘You’re all right, mate, we’ve got a system.’
Lyn gave him an apologetic look.
‘Weeks of practice. Frankie and I have to get all this back now, but that’ll be me finished for the day. Maybe we could grab a coffee, if you’ve got time?’
He knew that coffee was code for pub. It would be easy to go with her, slip into the comfort of alcohol and company, allow his defences to drift until he was willing to become reconciled to Jack’s betrayal of their father’s dignity.