Just Duffy

by Robin Jenkins

  She could also hardly keep her hands off him. Turning her head, she gave all the other girls in the café a snarl of warning. He was hers and she’d use her teeth on any girl who tried to steal him from her.

  ‘Buy us a coke, Duffy,’ shouted Cathie Barr.

  ‘You don’t have to buy them anything,’ said Molly. ‘You and me can sit at a table by ourselves.’

  He bought four cokes. ‘I’m looking for Mick Dykes.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry about Mick, Duffy. He said it was all right for me to go to your house.” She dropped her voice. ‘I’m staying the night. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  ‘Get some potato crisps while you’re at it, Duffy,’ called Cathie.

  He bought four packets.

  ‘You’re too generous, Duffy,’ grumbled Molly, as she helped to carry the bottles.

  ‘Hello, Duffy,’ said Cathie. ‘I was saying to Molly you’ve been to church.’

  ‘Look here, Cathie,’ said Molly, ‘I’m not having anybody take the mickey out of Duffy. From now on I’m looking after him. Isn’t that right, Duffy?’

  ‘Who’s looking after you, Molly?’ sneered Sally.

  ‘Duffy and me are looking after each other.’

  ‘I wasn’t taking the mickey,’ said Cathie. ‘I just asked if he was at church. Were you, Duffy?’

  He gave her his shy simpleton’s smile. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What church?’

  ‘It’s none of your business, Cathie, what church Duffy goes to,’ said Molly.

  ‘St Stephen’s,’ said Duffy, with childish pride.

  ‘Among the nobs!’ said Cathie.

  ‘It’s the nicest church in Lightburn,’ he said, ‘and it’s got the highest spire.’

  Molly backed him up. ‘So it has.’

  ‘Which spire are you talking about, Molly?’ asked Cathie. ‘The one with the bell in it or the one Mick showed you among the graves, in the summer-time?’

  Sally giggled, in a sneery kind of way, at the idea of Mick’s spire, which she too had seen though not among the graves.

  ‘Don’t listen to them, Duffy,’ said Molly. ‘Me and Mick only went once to the graveyard. Mick doesn’t like graves. He thinks they’re unlucky.’

  ‘Who did you see in the church, Duffy?’ asked Cathie. ‘Did you see Margaret Porteous? Cooley said you fancied her.’

  ‘Cooley was a fucking liar,’ said Molly. Then she remembered her lover was present, newly come from church. ‘I mean, she said a lot of things that weren’t true. Maybe you and me will go to church together next Sunday, Duffy.’

  ‘Not St Stephen’s,’ said Cathie.

  ‘We’ll go to St Stephen’s if we want to.’

  ‘But you haven’t got a fur coat, Molly.’

  ‘I don’t need a fur coat. Do I, Duffy? Anyway, maybe I could borrow Duffy’s mother’s.’

  ‘I thought Mick Dykes would be here,’ said Duffy, shyly.

  ‘He’s not allowed,’ said Cathie. ‘His mother’s found out about him and Fat Annie.’

  ‘It must have been that wee rat Crosbie that shopped him,’ said Sally.

  ‘No, it was Mick’s sister Nellie. When he came home last night after visiting Annie his mother was waiting for him. With a big belt. Have you seen Mrs Dykes, Duffy? She’s big and fierce. She made him take off his jeans and then she leathered his bare behind. He can’t sit down now. He’s got a black eye too.’

  ‘What’s it to his mother if he’s been fucking Fat Annie?’ sneered Sally.

  ‘It wasn’t for the fucking he went to Annie’s,’ said Molly, earnestly. ‘He said it was too much like hard work. He went because she let him sit in front of the fire and drink beer. His mother never lets him do that at home.’

  ‘How do you know his mother leathered him?’ sneered Sally.

  ‘Cathie gets to know everything,’ said Molly.

  ‘I know something else,’ said Cathie. ‘Annie’s up the spout. It wasn’t Mick, though. His mother says it was but it wasn’t.’

  Sally sneered. ‘I expect you know who it was, Cathie.’

  ‘Yes, I know but I’m not going to say. He’s a married man with four weans.’

  Duffy thought of Mrs Porteous. Was her lover a married man with children? She would despise Mrs Burnet and yet was just as immoral.

  ‘Serves Mick right,’ sneered Sally. ‘Him and his big dick.’ Her sneer became coquettish. ‘I’ve never seen you in here before, Duffy. Have you come to size up the talent, now that Cooley’s gone?’

  ‘He came to see me,’ said Molly.

  On Cathie’s wizened face appeared a witch’s smile. ‘You never said, Duffy, if you saw Margaret Porteous in the church.’

  Casually he asked if Johnny Crosbie came there on Sunday mornings.

  ‘Not this morning,’ said Molly. ‘He’s keeping out of Archie Cooper’s way.’

  ‘He needn’t bother,’ said Sally. ‘My dad says Archie’s to leave the wee cunt alone. It would be stupid to ruin his Army career for the likes of Johnny Crosbie.’

  ‘Besides,’ said Cathie, ‘Archie and his mate had to be brought home in a taxi last night from the British Legion hall, too drunk to walk.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ said Sally.

  ‘Nobody needs to tell Cathie anything,’ said Molly. ‘She just knows.’

  ‘Everybody wanted to stand them drinks,’ said Sally. ‘They’re heroes. Every soldier in Northern Ireland is a hero. That’s what my dad thinks.’

  ‘You never told us what Johnny Crosbie did to you, Sally,’ said Cathie.

  ‘And I’m not going to.’ She looked towards the door. ‘Look who’s here!’

  They turned their heads. Mick Dykes had come limping in. He had his hand up at his face to screen his eyes. They heard him ask for two packets of cigarettes and a bottle of Irn Bru.

  Duffy went over to him. ‘Hello, Mick.’

  ‘Hello, Duffy. What are you doing here?’

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘What about? I’ve to go straight back home.’

  ‘Is it true that Annie’s expecting, Mick?’ called Cathie.

  Everybody in the café was staring at Mick. There were guffaws. His nerve failed. He took his purchases and fled.

  Duffy went after him.

  Every step was painful for Mick. It was easy to believe his behind was lacerated.

  ‘Johnny Crosbie was hanging about the church this morning, Mick. People telephoned the police. They’re looking for him now.’

  ‘He gets headaches, Duffy. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. What we did last night in the church was wrong, Duffy. I told Cooley it would bring us bad luck and so it has.’

  ‘If Johnny was trying to hide from the police where would he go?’

  ‘He’s got a den in Crimea Street, in the house where he was born.’

  ‘But all the buildings there are being pulled down.’

  ‘That’s right. It’s dangerous. Sometimes he spends the night there. He’s got a paraffin heater.’

  ‘Will he be there now?’

  ‘He could be. Don’t go there with your good clothes on, Duffy. You’d get them ruined. If you see Johnny tell him I’ll get in touch when I can.’ He grinned, ruefully. ‘Tell him I’m confined to barracks. That’s what soldiers say, isn’t it?’

  Duffy then let him go on alone. Poor Mick tried to walk with his usual virile swagger but pain and shame crippled him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Crosbie lived in an older superior council housing scheme where the houses were only four to a block and had small individual gardens. Many of these were well-kept but none more so than Mr Crosbie’s. A dour withdrawn man who drove a lorry for the council’s Roads Department he was not popular with his neighbours who thought he paid too much attention to his roses and cabbages and not enough to his wife and son. In Johnny’s case they understood and forgave but not in his wife’s. Mrs Crosbie was liked and pitied even by those whose children Johnny as an infant had terrorised a
nd whose houses he had broken into. She had told them all a hundred times that Johnny’s was a medical condition, she couldn’t remember its big name, but it would get better when he grew up. She had said that when he was three, she was still saying it now that he was sixteen. Nobody believed her but nobody blamed her either. The general opinion was that he should have been strangled at birth, when his poor mother wasn’t looking.

  About sixty yards from Crosbie’s house the same police car was parked, on a piece of waste ground.

  Using a bus shelter as an excuse for waiting there, Duffy watched from a distance. If Crosbie appeared the police would pick him up and take him to the station. All Duffy could do then was to pray that Crosbie did not give him away.

  He was aware of the irony. Crosbie would not betray him because he wanted to do him harm, on the contrary it would be because he liked him and wanted him as a friend and comrade. He thought he and Duffy had the same grudge against society. Both of them had nothing to look forward to except everybody’s contempt and animosity.

  If the three of them were arrested and charged, Crosbie and Dykes, who had been in trouble with the police before, would be sent to reform schools. Duffy himself would be let off because he was simple-minded: many would testify to that. It would be said he had been led into crime. All his life afterwards he would be regarded by everyone as not quite right in the head. Children would shout ‘Daftie!’ after him in the street. His very efforts to show that he was not only sane but also more intelligent than most would be taken as proof of his simpleness. That he could tell what happened at Thermopylae or how many were killed at Hiroshima would be put down to his having heard about them somewhere and, in a way peculiar to weak-minded people, he had remembered them, without of course having any idea of their significance. Mr Harrison would not marry his mother: he would not want a criminal imbecile for a step-son. Every other man Duffy’s mother might want to marry would be repelled for that reason too. More bitterly than ever she would blame Duffy for ruining her life. In the end she would abandon him. He might well end up, as Cooley had prophesised, married to Molly McGowan, with half a dozen backward children, all of them supported by the State.

  On the other hand if Crosbie kept silent and there were no arrests how different Duffy’s future could be. Instead of Crosbie and Mick Dykes, Molly McGowan and Cathie Barr, he would associate with Margaret Porteous and Stephen Telfer and their friends. He would take part in conversations about poetry and history. He would learn cleverer and more respectable ways of opposing defilers of truth and abusers of authority. He would be a help and not a hindrance to his mother’s marrying, if not Mr Harrison then someone just as eligible. It was possible he himself might marry Margaret Porteous one day.

  Crosbie could prevent all that from coming true.

  At last the police car went away. They must be feeling hungry. There was no great hurry. They could pick up Crosbie any time.

  Duffy waited another half hour but Crosbie did not come. It was a good sign that he was keeping clear of the police.

  It was after two when Duffy got home, tired and hungry. He had hardly time to take off his raincoat before Mrs Munro was ringing the door bell. Her eyes were red and she was sniffing with grief.

  ‘Poor Jack’s passed on, Duffy. Some time during the night. Phemie said you were the last to speak to him.’ Still sniffing, she gave him a sly look. ‘You’re all dressed up. Were you at church?’

  ‘Yes.’ He wanted to be alone to think about Mr Ralston’s death.

  ‘What church was that, Duffy?’ As usual she spoke to him as if he was ten years old.

  ‘St Stephen’s.’

  ‘St Stephen’s! That’s away over in the West End. Are you sure? What took you there? From what I hear they don’t let just anyone in. That’s the benefit of being a bit on the simple side, you get away with things a more normal body wouldn’t. Was it some special service for deprived children or something like that.’ She went further in and listened. ‘I’m glad you’ve got rid of that besom Helen Cooley. Phemie and me think maybe we shouldn’t tell your mother you had her staying with you. We know it wasn’t your fault. You’d be no match for that pushy bitch. I hope it’s true what you told Phemie about not sleeping with her. Miss Porteous wouldn’t like it, would she, if you had VD.’

  He didn’t understand.

  ‘You had a visitor while you were out, Duffy. Good-looking black-haired lassie about your own age. Wearing a swanky blue coat. Said her name was Margaret Porteous.’

  ‘What did she want?’

  ‘I heard her at your door so I came to tell her you weren’t in. She asked me to let you know she’d called and she would see you on Tuesday, at the badminton. I didn’t know you played badminton, Duffy. Well, that’s the message. Maybe her mother sent her. Their kind like to help homeless cats and disabled soldiers and old donkeys. You would be lucky, Duffy, if they’re going to take an interest in you.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  There were no coal fires in his house. It was not easy to burn anything. It had to be done in a metal litter-box, and if it was something like his jotter it took some time, page by page. If he had been asked why he was destroying those accounts of human cruelties he would have replied that it was for Mr Ralston’s sake. Take a chance, Duffy, the dead man had said, meaning don’t be pessimistic, more good things happened than bad. As if to prove him right, the door-bell rang, it was Mrs Munro again, come this time with a badminton racket that she had found at the back of a cupboard. She had bought it years ago at a jumble sale, she didn’t know if it was any use or not, it had a string or two missing, but Duffy was welcome to it. He thanked her and she went off pleased that she, who had little money, was as concerned for the fatherless retarded lad as Mrs Porteous, who could easily afford it.

  About ten minutes later she was back, saying, anxiously, that she had thought she had smelled burning. Fire frightened her. You were always reading about people getting trapped and burnt to death. He assured her that he had just been burning some paper in a metal box. Just the same, she said, she’d be happier if she could see for herself what he had been up to. So, pushing him aside, she went into the kitchen, where she inspected the ashes in the box. They seemed safe enough but she sprinkled water on them to make sure. She wanted to know why he had burned the papers. He could have put them in the rubbish bin or flushed them down the lavatory. The truth was, she said, in a kindly way, he couldn’t be trusted to be left on his own. No boy of sixteen could, even with all his gripping senses.

  When she was gone he burned the tract. Then he took down from the wall of his bedroom the two paintings which had so worried Cooley. Rolling them up neatly, he fastened them with rubber bands and put them under his bed.

  All he needed now, to enable him to sleep soundly that night, and every other night, without nightmares, was Crosbie’s silence.

  As a philosophical proposition he contemplated the silencing of Crosbie by killing him.

  He had once heard someone declare on television that the greatest lie of the twentieth century was that it regarded human life as sacred. Politicians, ministers of religion, judges, everyone in authority, proclaimed that sanctity, and yet they knew that in their own lifetimes many millions of people had been killed in wars and many millions more had died of preventable disease and starvation. They knew also, and gave it their blessing, that new and more powerful weapons were being invented, able to lay waste the whole world.

  In his seemingly guileless way Duffy had pointed out the discrepancy to Mr Flockhart.

  Taken aback, the teacher had at first resorted to flippancy. ‘When anyone says life is sacred, Duffy, he means his own.’

  Duffy had waited for a serious answer.

  ‘It’s an ideal, Duffy, and in practice we always fall far short of our ideals, in this respect very far short. We’re in an early stage of evolution, morally speaking. Give us another thousand years.’

  On the Lightburn War Memorial, under the long list of names of men kil
led in the First World War, was an inscription that he had never understood: Death is swallowed up in Victory. He had wondered what the Germans, who had been defeated, put on their memorials.

  When he was five he had seen some bigger boys harry a hedge-sparrow’s nest. They had taken out the blue eggs and smashed them. He had realised then, and later more clearly, that those eggs, so small and frail, nevertheless represented an achievement more wonderful than any that the cleverest scientists and engineers were capable of. Life, it had seemed to him, was a gift that should be received and preserved with gratitude and reverence. Afterwards, to his mother’s amusement, he had gone through a long period of refusing to kill any living creature, even a fly.

  Governed by his own standards he could not kill anyone; but those standards would be dismissed by most people as too extreme and idealistic. He was entitled to judge himself by the standards of civilised society.

  In a nuclear war many millions of people, most of them innocent, would be killed. Everybody knew that, most were reconciled to it, a few protested, and nobody was sure whom to blame. Surely therefore it would be the blackest hypocrisy for anyone to pretend to be shocked by his killing of one person, who was evil and, if allowed to live, would do great harm.

  By burning the jotter he had, in a way, made himself fit to be Crosbie’s executioner.

  Between thinking and doing there was, he knew, an infinite difference.

  As he waited for darkness he kept telling himself that all he was going to do was satisfy himself that Crosbie would not give him away. Up to now he had never responded to Crosbie’s offers of friendship, but suppose he did and was able to persuade him that he was sincere (though he would not be, not altogether) then Crosbie might feel so pleased and honoured that for once his love of treachery would be subdued. It would mean Duffy’s having to continue being friendly with him, for a while at any rate, at a time when he was trying to cultivate the friendship of Margaret Porteous. It could be done, but wariness and patience would be necessary.