Big Boy Did It and Ran Away (10 page)

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Not this.

Not such an easy decision away from the PC. In the virtual world, you could live a million lives, take on a host of personas, and there was no such thing as regret because you could reload a saved game, go back to before the point where you went wrong, or quit and start over again. Even online, in deathmatch, there was no ultimate price for your mistakes: when you died, you just respawned elsewhere on the map and plunged back into the fray.

That’s what he’d been doing all these years, wasn’t it? Quitting and starting over again when it wasn’t going to plan. Respawning in a new job, thinking it didn’t really matter if things didn’t work out. That was why he was here at the airport, here where he could buy a ticket to anywhere and just disappear. Ray was looking at the Quit screen because he needed to know that it existed. He wasn’t really thinking the unthinkable, just standing on the edge to see whether it made him feel like jumping in or running back.

Ray looked at the clock on the departures board, wondered where Kate and Martin would be right then. Out for a walk with the pram maybe, passers‐
by stopping to offer their tuppenceworth, having heard the bawling from a hundred yards away.

‘Fine set of lungs on him, eh?’ Every fucking time. Every fucking one of them.

Or more likely she’d be pacing the carpet, music up loud for the dual purposes of soothing the baby’s soul and drowning his howls. He ought to get home, he knew. Home, where he’d be handed Martin as soon as he got in the door, Kate retreating to the bedroom, bathroom or kitchen for an hour’s respite.

Christ, five more minutes. Just five more minutes, please, to be tantalised, to sit within touching distance of what might be, what could be. He glanced down at the magazine, his phoney excuse for being here, made all the more phoney by the knowledge that he wouldn’t get a chance to read it, never mind play the games it was talking about.

Then he looked up again, and saw a ghost.

It was just a face in the crowd, one of dozens barrelling through the Domestic Arrivals hall, fresh off the Heathrow shuttle. The incident lasted barely two seconds, perhaps four striding paces amid that teeming bustle, but it was enough to leave Ray paralysed, sitting on the bench as though frozen in time, with the crowds whizzing around him like a frames‐
per‐
second time‐
demo test.

Look long enough at any busy corridor – any airport, any railway station – and for a second you’ll glimpse a face you think you know, the mind having an incurable habit of filling in the blanks with its own available resources. Ray couldn’t look at a pair of back‐
lit flowery curtains without seeing eyes, jawlines, profiles; clouds against a blue sky became a stratospheric sketchpad. However, this was slightly more than a glimpse, and the guy looked back. Stared back even, though he could have been doing so because Ray was staring at him, and he was maybe wondering if he was supposed to know the nosey bastard.

Then just as suddenly he was gone, as though swept under by the human current, leaving Ray white and gaping. He’d been looking at the guy before he realised he knew the face, staring at the face before he could put a name to it; and then the face vanished, just as he worked out that seeing it was impossible.

The hair was different; so different as to put the entire head distractingly out of context. A flowing, back‐
combed blond mane forever framed the visage in Ray’s memory, which possibly explained the delay as he made sense of it beneath a militarily close bullet‐
crop. In fact, he might never have made the connection at all but for the woman alongside slowing to dial her mobile, giving Ray the briefest uninterrupted view of the figure’s unmistakable gait. He walked as though he was wearing a cape, or as his mate Div used to put it, ‘like he thinks there’s two cunts blawin’ trumpets either side of the doorway’.

Simon Darcourt.

Sixteen years ago, he’d walked into Ray’s life with that same regal stride, a sweeping procession that seemed simultaneously too effortless to be entirely affected, too self‐
conscious to be entirely natural. His very physicality was pure theatre, a presence that commanded any room he entered and turned it immediately into his stage. Even the way the bloke smoked a cigarette was like a ballet. Ray never saw him do it upright, standing at a bus stop or walking along the street. It was always a seated performance, indoors: a graceful play of head, legs, arms, throwing back that mass of hair as the first jet of smoke was exhaled at forty‐
five degrees, right ankle cast over left thigh, left leg rigidly straight down to the heel, fag‐
bearing right arm languidly draped over the armrest of his chair. Ray used to watch it and wonder, like the tree falling in the deserted forest, whether Simon bothered to light up if there was no‐
one there to see it. If so, what a waste, like Neil Young playing to an empty hall.

He was magnificent, once upon a time, in those far‐
off student days. Like a comet blazing through wherever he passed, a coterie always in his trail, helplessly drawn by his aura and buffeted in his oblivious wake. They’d all been in his thrall once, all basked in his light, even if some would later be too proud or too wounded to admit it. Ray had stayed longer and flown closer to the heat than most, and got correspondingly burnt the worst too. All the others’ wax wings melted and they soon fell away. Well, all bar one, and she had her scorchmarks too.

Nobody would ever, could ever forget Simon Darcourt. Ray had known him for less than four years, but in the time since, he had remained as fresh and vivid in Ray’s mind as after that first Geography tutorial, or that last bitter exchange. Even glimpsed in a crowded airport, his should have been one of the most instantly recognisable faces in Ray’s memory, but two things had temporarily clouded his judgement, one of them being the buzz‐
cut. The other was that Simon Darcourt had been dead for three years.

Ray had even gone up to Aberdeen for the memorial service, admittedly partly out of curiosity to see whether Div had been accurate in predicting that the only friends present would be the ones Simon had made in the last month, having systematically alienated everyone else. In the event, there was a pretty big turnout, but it was hard to tell how many really knew the deceased. There was a large representation from the firm Simon worked for, as well as a sizeable delegation of civic dignitaries, including several local MPs, MSPs and even the then First Minister. It was a courtesy, maybe an apology, that the state offered to those it had failed to protect, as well as an honourable (if futile) gesture of dignified defiance towards their murderers.

Ray had waited until the bereaved parties, the official parties, the official parties’ security guards and even the old wino in the hooded duffel coat (a statutory fixture of Scottish cemeteries) had gone away, then went to the headstone to read the name and the dates, still hardly able to believe they referred to the right guy.

Poor bastard. It was never supposed to be like this. Simon had the awesome charisma of one who was born for greatness; if accompanied by the detestible arrogance of one who knew it. Whatever they had all come to think of him, he had made their world a more interesting place, and even once he had gone from Ray’s life, he still anticipated Simon one day pitching up again somewhere of celestial prominence. Ray didn’t buy the TIME these days, but any time he saw the front page on a newsstand, he half‐
expected to see those intense grey eyes staring back from it. And sure, some people’s lights shine bright in a confined space – school, uni – then dissipate against the wider sky, but Ray had never known anyone more naturally cut out for celebrity. It didn’t seem right that he should just be erased, rendered a footnote to some foreign conflict, a notch on the rifle‐
butt of a terrorist scrote and his infantile sense of grievance.

‘Sorry, mate,’ Ray had said, standing over the stone. ‘We should have met up for a pint, eh? Sorted it all out. I’ll miss you, man. I think I always did.’

It wasn’t sentiment; Ray had occasionally thought about getting in touch, going for that pint, but it had been easy to procrastinate. They had their whole lives, hadn’t they? Their paths were bound to cross again sooner or later.

In Real Life(tm), without a ‘reload saved game’ function, you most regret the things you don’t do, never more so than when the last chance has gone. Simon’s death had been a valuable lesson in carpe diem, enough in fact for Ray to propose to Kate shortly afterwards, following years of living together. And maybe that’s what this was too, via his stressed and fatigued mind playing tricks with him. It couldn’t have been Simon he saw, just a similar face, his brain distorting it to fit. The bloke certainly didn’t acknowledge him, there was no flicker of recognition before he looked away again. Even that distinctive walk must have been a projection; after all, how many nanoseconds did he actually see of the guy’s full length?

This was his subconscious’s way of telling him to stop feeling sorry for himself, go home and get on with it. It was reminding him, as he contemplated airborne escape, that journeys from airports don’t always take you to better places.

So he was having a hard time as a new father and a new teacher. Boohoo. He was shit at online deathmatch as well when he first started that, remember? Respawn and plunge back into the fray.

It will get easier. It will all get easier.

Ray winced, as ever, as he put his key in the lock, steeling himself for whatever awaited within. He had his lies prepared too, to explain being home late. Bad traffic on the M8. Should have known, his own daft fault for trying a shortcut.

Kate emerged from the living room, Martin in her arms. She was smiling and so was he.

‘Look at this,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘He’s calm,’ she explained, laughing a little. ‘No colic tonight. Do you recognise him?’

‘Just about.’

‘How are you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

Best not. He’d have to say where, for a start.

‘D’you want a wee hug?’ she asked, meaning with the baby.

‘Yes,’ Ray said, and meant it. He took hold of Martin, held his warm, tiny face to his cheek. The wee man barfed on his shoulder.

He laughed, and so did Kate.

‘So how was it today?’ she asked.

‘Ach, no’ bad.’

There were few things he didn’t confide in his wife, but under the circumstances, the fact that he detested his new career was something he hadn’t considered it prudent to share. He was aware she could read his reticence well enough to know that it wasn’t the dawn of an invigorating new voyage of self‐
fulfilment, but equally she knew that if he didn’t want to talk about it right then, it was best not to pry.

‘You?’

‘All right. He’s been a wee bit better today. Oh, and Lisa from the ante‐
natal group popped round with her wee Rachel, so we got a wee blether. I didn’t get any dinner sorted out again though. Sorry.’

When they’d both been at home, they’d been fighting each other to cook, as it meant time alone in the kitchen with a glass of wine and some music on while the other wrestled the infant. On your own with him, though, you were lucky if you got the chance to open a tin of beans.

‘I’ll rustle something up while he’s on the breast.’

‘Can you be bothered?’ Kate asked. ‘How about a takeaway? I’ve a hankering for curry.’

That sounded perfect. They hadn’t had one for months, it seeming a waste of money if they couldn’t sit down and enjoy it together. But even if they were eating it in shifts, a Ruby would do them the power of good. It would also give Ray the excuse for a walk, which he could really do with that night.

It was nearly nine by the time he got out, having allowed Kate time for a long soak and given Martin his nightly dook as well, in the absurdly optimistic but nonetheless enduring hope that it would send him off to sleep. It was raining a little, some light drizzle. Nothing compared to the miserable July they’d endured, a month of merciless downpours that had curtailed trips out with the pram and threatened to drive them cabin‐
crazy. August had been better, comparatively, but it had been a stinker of a summer in every possible way.

The rain wouldn’t have bothered him that evening anyway. He needed time with his thoughts, something best spent outdoors even before the advent of his offspring. What he had seen – or rather, what his mind had presented him with – had left him shaken, and not merely by its initial fright. It had been a psychological slap in the face with a large trout, distracting him from his depressed tunnel vision and knocking him off‐
balance enough to look again at what was in front of him.

Don’t quit. Respawn and plunge back into the fray. Notch up some frags, man, the game’s just starting.

The baby game was just starting too. Sceptically reluctant as he’d been to believe it, people had assured him that the colic would simply stop, as suddenly as it had begun. Three months, according to some, thirteen weeks said others. Martin hadn’t been that bad the night before, and seemed unrecognisably placid tonight too. It was going to get easier, better. As predicted by the health visitor, he had even started to smile. Maybe one day Ray would too.

He walked along their street, Kintore Road, a little enclave of Sixties‐
built modest semis amid the sandstone grandeur of Newlands’ nineteenth‐
century merchant‐
class avenues. At the end was a path leading to the footbridge across the Cart, a river that normally looked little grander than a large burn at this time of year, but which was swollen almost to winter depths by the recent monsoons. Across the bridge were the tenement‐
lined streets of Langside, divided by water from its more affluent neighbour. You could usually smell curry as soon as you crossed the bridge, though that would be from a tenement kitchen. The takeaway was quarter of a mile further on.

He heard a car door open behind him in the cul‐
de‐
sac as he reached the path. He glanced back. It was one of those people carrier efforts, with a guy in a sweatshirt and jogging pants standing outside the passenger door, apparently giving directions to whoever had dropped him off. The people‐
carrier pulled away and did a one‐
eighty, heading back up towards Cathcart Road. Ray slowed his pace, planning to let the jogger pass before the bridge, but the bloke in the sweatshirt was walking too. Maybe dropped off after a kickabout somewhere.