Authors: William McIlvanney
‘Dinna ye hear it, dinna ye hear it?’ Jim said. ‘The pipes at Lucknow sound.’
When Jim had brought across the third pint and sat down, Andy raised his whisky glass.
‘A toast,’ he said. ‘To such natives as prove friendly tonight.’
‘May they also prove good-looking,’ Jim added.
‘Hell, you want jam on both sides of yer toast, right enough,’ Andy said.
Charlie and Jim downed their whiskies in a oner, while Andy sipped and savoured, holding his glass like a yellow nugget to the light.
‘Please, dear proles,’ he said. ‘Don’t gulp. Your palates could sue you for assault and battery. You’ve got to woo each taste bud individually, not rape the bleeders en masse. That’s the worst o’ the Union Bar up at university. No spirits. Beer, lager, and cider. Ye jist canny achieve the full symphonic inebriation on that lot. Ye need the contrapuntal thingamijig of the more subtler spirits. Ye just canny do it wi’ beer on its Todd. It’s like tryin’ to play the ’cello without a bow.’
‘Aye,’ Jim agreed. He was consciously attempting to regain sobriety because he sensed the direction in which Andy was heading and he knew the need to be serious was at hand. ‘This is better. It’s just no’ the same in the Union. No wonder the clients is going elsebit. The place is gettin’ derelict.’
‘Aye, aye,’ said Andy. ‘What wi’ the absence o’ spirits and then the absence o’ Charlie. Times is bad.’
‘Aw leave ma heart in one bit, Andy,’ Charlie said. ‘Ye’ll have me watering ma beer. Gowdie’ll report me tae the Brewers’ Union.’
‘No, but jokin’ and kiddin’ aside, Charlie.’ Jim was doing his hazy best to put on his ‘fidus Achates’ expression. ‘When are ye comin’ back up, man? Ah mean it’s no’ the same without ye.’
‘Aye right, Jim,’ Charlie said. ‘My gums bleed for you. Naw, Ah’ve got no plans in that direction.’
‘But why no’, Charlie?’ Andy leaned forward concernedly, beer sketching the gesture into caricature, so that he looked like a doctor in an advertisement. All he needed was a pair of
glasses in his hand with which to tap knowledgeably. ‘Why do ye say that? What do ye have against it?’
‘Ah’ve got nothing against
it
.’ Charlie shrugged, contemplating his beer. ‘Ah just don’t have any notion o’ goin’ back up, that’s all.’
‘Is it because o’ the money side of it?’Jim asked. ‘Because if ye see about it, ye must be due for a bigger grant because of, ye know, what happened.’
‘Naw, naw. Ah’m no’ exactly neck-an’-neck wi’ Aristotle Onassis right enough. But Ah haven’t really thought about it from that angle at all.’
Andy was nodding, wise in years and hops, waiting his chance to proceed with the diagnosis.
‘Is it because of – what happened to yer father, Charlie?’ he asked gently. His expression was expectant as a doctor’s probing a pain, and his eyes asked, ‘Does that hurt?’
Charlie shuffled slightly in his chair – as if he was skewered uncomfortably on the remark.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Ah suppose it is. Aye.’
Andy paused on the kerb of his next remark, like someone letting a cortege go past, before he took a deep breath of philosophy and went on.
‘Well, Ah suppose Ah know how ye must feel, Charlie,’ he said. ‘Ah mean it must be quite a thing to have to take. Especially wi’ somebody like yer father or mother. Ye live that close to them all the time. It’s the kind of relationship that’s tacit. Ye just grow into it. Ah mean there’s no time when ye have to work at it consciously. Ye get to feel as if it’s always goin’ to be there. But it isn’t. That’s the way it is, Charlie. Ah mean ye just can’t spite yerself because of it. It may be corny, Charlie, but, after all, what’s happened to yer father happens to everybody.’
‘Naw, but it’s no’ just that he died, Andy. There’s a bit more than biology involved. Fair enough. So he died. But it was the way he died an’ everything about it. Ah don’t know. But it shouldny have been like that. Ah mean ye’ve no way of realizin’ what he musta felt like before he died. Nobody
could ever know what that man musta felt. Ah mean,
me.
Ah’m his son, an’ Ah just didn’t know ’im. What a waste it was! The good things in ’im that were wasted. That’s what gets me when Ah think of ’im. . . .’
Suddenly Charlie was talking fluently about his father. Mysteriously it had happened. A series of things, his mood, the night, the beer, the place, the talk of Andy and Jim, had all come together in the right million-to-one sequence, and it was as if someone should fiddle long and futilely with a safe and then for no apparent reason should hit the combination. Without warning and without Charlie’s understanding why or how, the click came and it swung open. He was bringing out many things about his father and showing them to Andy and Jim. He was talking about incidents from the past, some serious, some humorous, about the things his father talked of, about how he remembered his uncle Sanny, about the great egg-breaking contest, about habitual sayings his father had. He ranged from the serious to the comic, was nostalgic and thoughtful and laughing by turns, and Andy and Jim listened well, put in appropriate comments and seemed to appreciate the things he was saying. They formed their own closed circuit of conversation and attention, oblivious to the rest of the bar. They made a little private moment among them, and Charlie found an ease and naturalness in it that he hadn’t known for a long time. He talked at length and bought another round of beers and whiskies and talked some more. And while he talked the pain and bewilderment seemed to ease out of him like pus.
When he had got it out of himself, they let a pleasant and unstrained silence rest for a time like a poultice on his revelations and Andy bought another round and they all talked sensibly round the situation, comparing attitudes. Jim’s mother had died when he was very young and he explained how he had really been too young to understand fully what was going on. He remembered mainly the oppressive need for quietness that had preceded her dying and in his memory the images of his relatives’ eyes, watery with sympathy, suddenly
overtaking him at his self-absorbed activities, alternated with those of forefingers being put to lips. He said that even after her death he had for a long time moved about the house on perpetual tip-toe, especially in the dusty rooms upstairs, as if he was frightened to waken her from a sleep. But he admitted it wasn’t the same as losing a parent when you were old enough to appreciate what was happening and feel just what it meant.
Both of Andy’s parents were alive, but he made up for this deficiency by talking of how his feelings might be similar to Charlie’s in the same circumstances. He tried to explain what his relationship with his father meant to him and the things about him he would miss most if he died, as if he was making out a blue-print of prospective grief.
The situation was to some extent ridiculous. Beer had so clouded that mirror of self-consciousness in-built in everyone that they couldn’t see their own ludicrousness. Here they sat like a panel appointed to draw up the definitive attitudes to grief, The Handbook of Filial Piety. They were somehow like boys telling each other secrets momentously trivial. But alcohol was not the only component in the situation, nor was the ludicrous its only dimension.
Sentiment and beer and indulgence might have gone into its composition but out of them had grown something genuine. The feeling of community they had among them was real, so that in their mouths dead cliches vibrated for a moment into life, were reaffirmed instantly by their exact correspondence to the thoughts of those who heard them.They met together on common ground, and Charlie continued to feel a genuine affinity that counteracted his sense of isolation, his sense that he was someone alone with a private problem. They were three young men on a Saturday night, talking to each other. The feeling of identity was so strong among them that when the conversation came round again under Andy’s direction to university, Charlie was able to join in and at least talk about his reasons for not going back. The only excuse he could think of was that he had already missed too much work.
As soon as he had made that admission, Andy became more animated.
‘Ah, but ye don’t have to worry about that, Charlie,’ he said.
‘Ah don’t see how ye arrive at that, Andy, Charlie countered. ‘It wid be pretty well impossible just to take up where Ah left off. It’s no’ just a matter o’ missin’ a few weeks’ work. Ah’ve missed a coupla class exams in the time Ah’ve been off as well.’
‘Calm yerself, youth,’ Andy said. ‘You are reckoning without yours truly, the poor man’s Clarence Darrow. I have been arguing your case for you. Only this week Ah dropped a bug in the esteemed lug of your august tutor –’
‘Ye spoke to Ramsey?’
‘How did ye guess? Ye must have secret information. Naw, but Ah did, Charlie. Ah told ’im the circumstances. An’ Ah quizzed ’im about the class exams. He’s definitely on your side, Charlie. He reckons he can virtually guarantee ye your class ticket in English. Yer first term exam was good enough on its Todd. He says he wid also put in a word for ye wi’ the history department as well. He wants to see ye, himself. How about that, Charlie? Fair enough?’
‘Pretty good, right enough.’
‘Well how about it, Charlie?’ Jim was insistent. ‘What about Monday? Get right in there.’
‘Are ye gemme?’ Andy asked.
Charlie was hesitant. But the eager optimism reflected in the faces of Andy and Jim made it seem churlish to refuse. And the beer was prompting him to share their optimism.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Monday it is.’
Andy and Jim cackled triumphantly, slapping Charlie’s shoulders. The mood created by Charlie’s answer completed the work of the beer. Drunkenness was now in order. Jim was the first to fall. Delight unclicked the safety-catch and seven pints and three doubles seemed to explode in him simultaneously. He banged the table obstreperously and blew an invisible hunting-horn. Gowdie materialized beside the table, his
face forcing itself into a constipated smile. Jim nearly swallowed his hunting-horn. Andy nodded reassuringly to Gowdie and he hovered off.
‘Aye, come on,’ Charlie said. ‘Let’s get out before Gowdie goes for his six guns.’
They all rose noisily and were heading for the door when Jim suddenly stopped them.
‘Wait a minute, though,’ he said. ‘We have forgot the traditional cairry-oot. The entrance-fee to Eddie’s is a bottle.’
‘Jeez aye,’ Andy said.
They crowded round the bar, jostling their way in to make their choice. Now Gowdie appeared behind the bar, with a smile as wide as his wallet.
‘Yes, gentlemen. Can I help you?’
They looked at the glittering array of bottles.
‘Have ye anything for a penny?’ Jim said.
‘Ye’ve got to choose carefully here,’ A.ndy said. ‘It all depends on how dishonourable yer intentions are. Sherry for a wee bit slap-and-tickle. Liqueur for the heavy necking. An’ whisky if ye really mean business.’
‘Ah’ll have a case o’ whisky,’ Jim said. ‘A half-bottle o’ Bell’s please.’
‘Here, Andy,’ Charlie said. ‘Ah’ll get your bottle. You got an extra round of drinks there. Ye’re throwin’ yer money about like a man wi’ nae arms.’
‘Think nothin’ of it,’ Andy said. ‘Ah’ll get it. The old man had the fixed odds up the day. An’ he slipped me a coupla quid on the strength of it. Then Jim an’ me had a wee double up with our turf accountant. You are hobbing and also nobbing with men of some substance.’
Charlie bought whisky too and Andy took vodka.
‘Now,’ said Andy. ‘If youse will accompany me to the toilet, I will show youse something to your advantage.’
‘Right,’Jim said. ‘We’ll go to the lounge one as being more sedater and more suited to men of our calibre.’
In the lounge toilet Andy supplied each of them with a small square packet.
‘I trust, gentlemen,’ he said, debonairly arching one eyebrow, ‘that you are fully cognizant of the wee contrivances that is contained in these packages? And that I need not instruct you as to their application to the human anatomy?’
‘Not at all,’ Jim said. ‘The only thing is, Ah have an exceptionally big forefinger. Ah just hope this fits it.’
They went out through the lounge with a lot of laughing and jostling. Jim lagged behind in the toilet, so that Andy and Charlie were out in the street before he came through the lounge. On the way out, he brushed against a man at one of the tables and went on without an apology.
The man looked after him briefly. When he turned back round, the woman with him was smiling at him.
‘Temper, temper,’ she said.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking it’s an awkward age. Don’t you think it’s about time we went up?’
‘In a minute,’ she said, thoughtfully sipping her drink.
He watched her for a moment, then took out a monogrammed cigarette-case and lit a cigarette with a monogrammed lighter. He fidgeted for a second. He lifted his empty glass and drained the last bead of whisky from it.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring the car round to here for you. You can powder your nose while you’re waiting. If we’re going up, we’d better go now.’
She nodded, lifting her handbag.
Chapter 16
‘
COULD I SEE YOUR CREDENTIALS PLEASE, GENTLEMEN
?’
The voice came through the letter-box. Three bottles were held up, and the door swung open.
‘Come in,’ Eddie said to them. ‘And bring your three friends with you.’
They took off their coats in the hall. The sitting-room was a medley of sounds, several simultaneous remarks, a stutter of raucous laughter, a shouted name, ‘The Shadows’ plangent in the background, all shaken together into a confused cacophony.
‘Listen to the noise,’ Eddie said. ‘You would think they were having a party to listen to them. You’ve arrived in good time, boys. We’ve got so many wall-flowers in here, it’s beginning to look like a conservatory. Forward. To the front line.’
He ushered them into a room where his command didn’t seem out of place. Backslaps and waving hands and thumbs-up signs and faces smiling in recognition exploded all around them and they were bombarded with phrases like ‘guests of honour’ and ‘Charlie himself’ and ‘the three must-get-beers.’
‘No autographs please,’ Jim said, bowing all round the room. ‘Buttons from my jacket may be had on request.’