One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night

by Christopher Brookmyre

  He might even have ventured tentatively to concede that he was, to his enormous surprise, maybe just possibly slightly kind of enjoying himself, and not just because of the ostentatious wealth of new material he was being gifted. The potentially disconcerting strangeness of being confronted at once by so many faces from the past was tempered by fascination at the way those faces had changed, and in many cases also by an uncharitable amusement at the size or shape of the body underneath. His conscience tried to rein him in on this last, particularly in the case of beer-swollen males, reminding him with a little internal finger-poking that not everybody could afford cocaine. Still, at least he wasn’t lying when explaining that his own slimline appearance was down to a Californian lifestyle.

  He had come here to be humble, to exhume daft old stories and to hear what had happened to everybody else in the time when he was lost in the mirror-maze of self. He’d had images of standing there, nodding and smiling – but principally just listening – as other people did the talking. He’d hear all about their lives, their experiences, their weans, whatever, then they’d walk off thinking he was a nice guy, and maybe he’d walk off feeling like one. He used to be a nice guy, once upon a time. The teachers used to tell his mum that. He was polite, well-behaved, considerate, hard-working … all that stuff.

  He used to be such a sweet thing …

  So far it wasn’t quite going according to plan. This was perhaps because he’d failed to anticipate that everyone else might not share his currently low opinion of himself. He’d also failed to anticipate that they would be fairly interested in hearing about his life, too. And he’d utterly failed to consider that their first-hand memories of him were of an approachable, easy-going and fairly likeable person. Consequently, rather than be humble, he was feeling humbled: they were chucking warmth at him by the bucketload. And as for getting to hear about their lives, forget it.

  ‘Matt Black! Howzitgaun! I cannae believe it. We were just talkin’ aboot you. There was a rumour goin’ aboot that you were here the night, but I didnae believe it until I saw you. I cannae believe I’m staunin’ here talkin’ to you efter aw these years. Absolutely mental. I must have bored her silly aboot you, eh? This is my wife, by the way, Maureen. Maureen, this is Matt Black. See, I bet you thought I was makin’ it up aboot bein’ at school wi’ him. We’ve got aw your videos and CDs, Matt man. I cannae believe you’re here. I thought you’d be far too busy to bother comin’ oot tae a thing like this, but it just shows you, eh? You’re livin’ in America noo, is that right? But you were ower two year ago for the tour. We saw you at the Theatre Royal. I nearly died laughin’, didn’t I, Mo? Whit was I like? Absolutely mental. So how are you? Are you tourin’ again? Aw, man, see that thing you did aboot Mandelson’s boyfriend an’ the pager? Wi’ him readin’ it tae see whit tae scream durin’ orgasm? Aw, Jesus, I was on the flair, so I was. Or that bit aboot Cardinal Winning? Absolutely mental. Wonder whit aul Father McGinlay would have made of it, but. Mind that time we were in first-year Science an’ he came in tae tell aw the guys aboot how we wurnae allowed tae wank? I’m surprised you never done a routine aboot that. Mibbe you’re workin’ on it, eh? Or mibbe I’ll get credit for suggestin’ it. It’s magic to see you, by the way. Are you ower for long?’

  And so on.

  It was a while before Matt even got to move from the first spot he’d taken up, a few yards from the ballroom’s main door, where two waiters were welcoming everyone with glasses of champagne. He’d automatically taken hold of one before he could commence any internal dialogue about his current drug abstinence or worry whether anyone had read the tabloid stories describing him as an alcoholic. If nothing else, he’d felt he needed a prop. With all the guests arriving accompanied, he thought he’d look and feel less of a haddy standing on his own if he had a celebratory drink in his hand. But he’d barely managed a sip before catching the first familiar eye and being hailed with an enthusiasm so solicitous that it made him forget to dwell on how scarcely he deserved it.

  Couples were circulating and interweaving as though part of a great eightsome reel, quickly congregating into new groups each time one broke up. Jim Murray and his wife Maureen were joined by Anne-Marie Dougray (née Taylor) and her husband Derek, beckoned by Jim as they passed. (‘C’mere, Anne-Marie. You’d never believe it – look, it’s Matt Black. Matt, do you remember Anne-Marie from Mrs Laurence’s class at O-grade?’) When Jim and Maureen were buttonholed by the newly arrived Andrew Reilly and partner, their places were quickly taken by Paul Duff and his wife Angela. In turn that couple was loudly hullaaaw!ed from behind, and as they turned to see who had called, Matt, looking elsewhere, found himself in the glare of another God-look-who-it-is smile, and on it went.

  The majority of them knew little of his work beyond that he was a comedian, and a few weren’t even aware of that: once this would have felt like a sturdy boot in the only place more sensitive than his ego, but tonight it was curiously refreshing. Apart from reminding him of a whole world where what he did meant knob-all to people, it was an unexpected comfort that they seemed pleased to see him simply because they remembered him from school (and presumably did so with some modicum of fondness). More disarming still was remembering how much he’d once liked some of them.

  Somewhere amid the throng he fielded a catch-you-when-this-whole-thing-calms-down nod from Allan Crossland, the only person present who he’d kept in any kind of contact with. Admittedly this hadn’t gone much beyond a few pints at intervals of up to three years, but the effort and intention had always been reciprocally appreciated. It wasn’t like they lived around the corner from each other, both of them knew that.

  There was another such long-distance wave from Charlie O’Neill, someone else Matt was hoping for a long late-night blether with, and not just because he was now playing for Arthurlie. In a school full of hardmen and would-be hardmen, big Charlie had been like a guardian angel to vulnerable short-arses like himself, being the sort of guy only the most psychotic (i.e. Davie Murdoch) would pick a fight with. He carried respect because of his size and strength, as well as for being about the best footballer the school had ever produced, all of which perhaps explained why, unlike many of his peers, he never acted like he had something to prove. An indefatigably good-natured character, he never threw his weight about, and consequently one of his few intolerances was those who did. There’d been once or twice Matt had seen studio execs bawling out an underling and found himself wishing big Charlie could step out of the shadows and ‘have a wee quiet word’. Whatever he got sent off for last week, it was a safe shout the Pollok player deserved it.

  Perhaps ironically, perhaps not, the most awkward thing was talking to those who were clued-up about his stuff, as their deference to the iconic Matt Black threatened to become an impediment to having a conversation with plain old Matthew from St Mick’s. He felt especially embarrassed and unworthy when Ally McQuade produced a copy of the Thatcher’s Funeral Party Fund CD for him to sign, having brought it along on the off-chance that Matt would show. Ally had been a lot funnier at school than Matt ever was onstage. He wanted to tell him that, but couldn’t imagine doing so without sounding like a patronising prick.

  Instead he tried steering the conversation away from the subject of himself (‘So what about you, Ally? You married?’), but Ally steered it back so consistently that Matt began to suspect the guy was hiding something. He took this irrational notion as a further symptom of his own sustained self-loathing: he was actually having difficulty getting his head round the idea of people liking him.

  In fact, Matt was finding himself the unaccustomed recipient of so much goodwill that it had been perversely reassuring when Brendan Mooney demonstratively blanked him during his chat with Ally. ‘Buckin’ ’ Brendan had been standing nearby with an austerely gaunt and colourless female Matt recognised instantly as Mary-Theresa Devlin. She hadn’t changed a hair since she was fifteen, but then in those days she hadn’t so much been fifteen as fifteen-going-on-forty-five. T
he matching wedding bands on their fingers were a message from fate reminding Matt that it was a more drily vicious comedian than he’d ever be, even if its gags tended towards the obvious now and then. Buckin’ Brendan, God’s holy altar-boy, had married MTD-LWT, the one person in the year who was arguably more ascetically religious than he was.

  In third year, Brendan had complained to the headmaster about their English teacher, Mrs Laurence, showing the class a video of Polanski’s Macbeth, as it contained ‘scenes of nakedness’, or ‘durty bits’ as the more tarnished members of the class referred to them. Ally McQuade had questioned the reliability of Brendan’s account, on the grounds that he had theatrically covered his eyes at the offending moments, to shield them from an occasion of sin. ‘Either that or you were peekin’ and you’ll go to the bad fire.’

  Unfortunately, the headmaster, Mr Flaherty, was far less critical, being the same arsehole fundamentalist who’d taken a black-marker to all the biology textbooks and obliterated any reference to contraception. Polanski was replaced by the evocatively minimalist (i.e. zero-budget) BBC version, thus denying future classes the invaluable aesthetic enlightenment that was Francesca Annis’s tits. Somehow, for all her towering theatrical presence, Judi Dench’s ‘unsex me here’ speech lacked a certain je ne sais quoi by comparison.

  Buckin’ Brendan had been morally self-righteous before he could pronounce it. Matt always assumed his familially indoctrinated loathing of all things sexual would lead Brendan down the well-worn and traditional path into the priesthood, where ultimately his long-repressed and now thoroughly distorted sexuality would assert itself in the equally well-worn and traditional priesthood practice of buggering small boys. Instead he’d managed to find a lifestyle potentially even more grimly asexual than holy orders: he’d married LWT (Legs Welded Together), of whom Matt had once heard a teacher say ‘If she sooked a lemon, the lemon would go “fffft-oooh”.’

  Ally mischievously tapped Brendan on the shoulder, saying, ‘All right, Bren, my man? How you doin’? You remember Matt Black, here, don’t you?’

  Brendan’s face contorted in much the same way as the aforementioned lemon. He didn’t look Matt in the face, which gave away that he’d already noticed him. ‘I wouldn’t have the man’s records in my house,’ he declaimed highly. ‘We’ve got children, you know. Come on, dear.’ And away they went, a spoor of piety buffeting in their wake.

  Ally smirked, then they both burst out laughing.

  ‘Sorry, Matt, that was a bit naughty of me. I ran into Brendan in a supermarket two or three years back, must have been no’ long after you’d that sitcom pilot.’

  ‘Not impressed?’

  ‘Fair to say, naw. But I don’t imagine he’d been a big fan before that, either. He got quite het up on the subject of yourself, actually.’

  ‘So what did he say aboot me? That I’m …’ They started laughing before Matt could finish, both aware of what was coming. ‘… a buckin’ disgrace?’

  ‘Buckin’ obscene,’ Ally corrected, doubling over.

  ‘Ach, critics. They know buck-all.’

  The pilot was never likely to have been a hit in the Mooney household, Matt guessed, not that that would put them in any kind of minority. The ill-starred Harmony Row was about two abominably bigoted families from either side of the Lanarkshire sectarian divide – the O’Learys from Coatbridge and the McWilliams from Larkhall – who by bureaucratic error were rehoused in either half of a semi-detached. One Scottish critic called it ‘the most hate-filled thirty minutes of television I have ever had the misfortune to watch’. Another, of course, simply shat in Matt’s luggage.

  He’d admit his characterisation was both stereotyped and sadistically cruel, but would assert in his defence that such sadism was only possible because the truth hurts.

  He depicted the devoutly Catholic O’Learys (Catholics are, exclusively, ‘devout’, Protestants exclusively ‘staunch’; lexicography has yet to explain it) as the most joyless family on the face of the planet. They were all anaemically pale, thin and hollow-faced, wearing a uniform expression of resigned suffering, with the exception of their teenage daughter, who simply looked suicidally depressed. The interior of their house was desolately sparse, with the only items of ornamentation on display a series of gruesomely graphic crucifixes. The drab white walls were bare apart from three pictures. One was a painting of ‘The Sacred Heart’, a standard image showing Jesus with his face turned upwards, his hands holding open his robe to reveal his chest, on which was visible a heart surrounded (and punctured in places) by thorns. Any time Matt saw one he always wanted to caption it: ‘Check this for a tattoo, big man.’ The second picture was of the Pope, and the third was of Tommy Burns.

  They went to mass as a family group twice a day, spent all their holidays at shrines in Ireland, and conducted family prayer vigils every Saturday afternoon, beseeching the Blessed Trinity and the Virgin Mary to grant Celtic a holy and deserved victory. Their only permitted pleasure was the satisfied contemplation of the reward that awaited them in Heaven, where there would be no Masonic referees because there would in fact be no Protestants, and where Celtic would win the League for all eternity.

  None of them had ever been to Parkhead.

  The teenage daughter did, in fact, commit suicide at the end of the pilot episode, after her parents finally noticed that she was a little down in the mouth and suggested cheering her up with a family day out: a visit to the shrine at Carfin grotto. It was Matt’s intention to bring her back and have her top herself in oppressed despair shortly before the closing credits every week.

  The McWilliams, in bludgeoningly unsubtle contrast, were a study of bloated self-indulgence inside their matching, amply filled Rangers shellsuits. They sat around watching endless Rangers games on Sky TV, drinking cans of McEwan’s lager, belching uncontrollably, farting enthusiastically and every so often declaring, ‘We arra peepel!’, to assert the ethnic superiority of the Scottish Protestant.

  The interior of their stone-clad semi was like a museum of contemporary cultural vulgarity. It was filled to bursting with the most hideous kitsch the props department had been able to lay hands on, starting with the painting of the green-faced oriental lady and working down the taste ladder from there. Pride of place, however, went to the enormous portrait of King Billy on his white charger, which took up most of one wall above the fireplace. What space wasn’t thoroughly cluttered with accumulated tat accommodated official and unofficial Rangers FC merchandising, the relentless purchase of which had the family mountainously in debt. In the pilot, the mid-season release of a third away-strip led to a crisis meeting in which it was democratically agreed that they would live on dog food for a month to pay for the new gear.

  None of them had ever been to Ibrox.

  The only dissenting voice was the family’s teenage son, a closet homosexual with frustrated artistic aspirations, who would, to retain a sense of balance, also commit suicide at the end of every show.

  Harmony Row didn’t quite reach Brass Eye complaint levels, but if the number of calls to Channel 4 from Scotland had been matched across the UK, it would have probably taken footage of a necrophiliac having his way with the late Princess of Wales to beat the figure. However, it did set a new benchmark in death threats. Also, four members of the cast were assaulted in public the week after the pilot aired, apparently another broadcasting record. Unimpressed even by these televisual high-water marks, Channel 4 didn’t commission a full series.

  In time another nearby gathering went supernova and Ally was swallowed by the resulting black hole. He backed away with a smile and a roll of the eyes that acknowledged how this was still the whirlwind meet-and-greet stage. Matt felt happily confident that there’d be time for a bit more than that later: all night, if required.

  He barely had time to raise his glass to his lips before there was a tap on his shoulder and he found himself facing Lisa McKenzie.

  ‘So, how you doin’, Matthew Black?’ She took his arm as she
spoke and led him back a step, as though there was some seclusion to be found that extra two feet nearer the wall. There was nonetheless an intimacy about the gesture, or maybe Matt merely hoped there was. They’d never been anything like familiar way back when, so Lisa was being at least a little forward. He looked at her face, matured into features elegantly sharper than he remembered, her eyes glinting with a conspiratorial knowingness. There was momentarily a hollow feeling in his stomach, an increase in heart rate at the pitiable but mandatory anticipation of I’ve-been-waiting-years-for-you scenarios.

  ‘Oh, I’m doing … better than I expected at this thing, anyway,’ he replied, dying to steal a glance below face-level. In his peripheral vision he could make out a blur – yellow dress, slim body – but couldn’t escape her gaze long enough to bring it into heart-aching focus.

  ‘Here on your tod?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ Please say it, please say it, please say it.

  ‘Aye, me too.’

  Yyyyyyes.

  She took a sip from her champagne glass and smiled. ‘Yeah, afraid I didn’t feel I was quite ready to parade myself and my dyke bidie-in before the sophisticates of Auchenlea society.’

  Nnnnnno.

  Matt, despite the wallop, knew he was being paid some kind of compliment. If he missed a beat, he made sure it didn’t show. He smiled back with reciprocal conspiracy. ‘So why are you coming out to me?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m out to a lot of people, but not in this company. I’ve seen enough of your stuff to take a flyer on you being cool about it.’

  ‘That may be so, but I might still ask if I can watch.’

  She laughed. ‘Sure you might, but only in a terribly clever, post-modern, self-deprecatory kind of way.’