Swing Hammer Swing!

by Jeff Torrington

  She shook her head. ‘Been warned about’m, that’s all.’

  ‘Warned?’

  ‘That he’s more arms than an octopus – one to be watched.’

  Cullen groaned then sank with a gurgle onto the mired bed of his dreams. Octopus? More like a big Fenian haddy caught on a tartan hook.

  ‘He’s in some state.’

  I nodded. ‘Works hard at it.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you waken’m?’

  ‘Got a stick of dynamite on you?’

  She took a tortoiseshell fag case from her overall pocket and flicked it open. ‘Is it all right to?’

  I produced my lighter and presented its flame to her with Hollywood knackiness. Her long pale hands and manicured nails suggested that housework wasn’t the lady’s strong suit. ‘Where’ve they been hiding you?’ I asked, ensuring that the confab didn’t rise above Tinsel Town tattle: B movie dialogue for B movie situations – saves the hassle.

  Her words came out on a tickertape of smoke. ‘Peggy’s sick, you see, and she asked me to stand in for her, just tonight. What with this talk of a bonus when the place shuts she . . .’

  ‘Peggy’s your old lady – right?’

  ‘Sister.’ She smiled. Her teeth made a real shiny mouthful and managed to hold their own for whiteness against her pallid lips. I retrimmed the carbons and footered again with the focus. ‘What’s up wae Peggy, then?’

  ‘Her chest’s gone again.’

  This invited an obvious flip response but I resisted it. Dropping the sound a notch or so as an MGM blizzard began to have its way with a huddle of igloos, I asked her what she was called.

  ‘Rebecca – Rebecca McQuade.’

  I went over to the carbon box and took out a couple of fresh rods, motioning as I did so towards the basket chair. ‘Park yourself for a bit, Rebecca.’

  ‘Becky.’

  ‘Okay, Becky. Take some weight off.’

  She shook’r head. ‘I’d better get back.’

  ‘Finish your fag first.’

  An expression I presumed was one of gratitude tried to struggle through her face-pack. ‘Ta. Don’t think I’m cut out for this sort of work. My dogs are barking.’ She lowered herself into the crackling chair then, slipping off one of her sandals, began to massage her foot. To do this she’d to cock her leg some and, given the pelmet of a dress she was almost wearing I was granted a generous view of her suspendered stocking top. My old ticker all but got its diastoles and systoles in a fankle and MacDougall began to get ideas above his station. Hellish what gonads can do to a man, have’m jumping through hoops, oinking lustfully, smacking his flippers, performing in the spotlight of his libido for the glittering prize, that erotic titbit women from time to time choose to toss our way.

  She lowered her leg but not MacDougall’s temperature. ‘You must be Matt Lucas,’ she said.

  ‘If I must, then I must.’

  ‘I imagined you’d be . . . well, older.’

  ‘S’that so?’

  Cullen groaned again as maybe a bottle of Scotch fell from a ledge of his mind.

  ‘Hadn’t you better give’m a shake?’ she asked. ‘What would Mr – Whitshisname?’

  ‘Burnett. Oswald J. Burnett.’

  ‘Right. What’d he say if he found him up here in that state?’

  I shrugged. ‘Not a lot for he’d probably have snuffed it. Burnett’s got a dodgy clock. Hasn’t made it up them apples and pears in the last ten years.’

  She eyed the comatose Cullen. ‘Can’t stand drunks.’

  ‘And drunks can’t stand.’ I nodded. ‘Aye, it’s a hard auld life, eh?’

  A lone Eskimo was floating off to his death aboard a chunk of ice roughly the size of Millport when he’d been lured onto it, but which had soon shrunk to the dimensions of a doormat. The brave lad, becoming aware of his plight, muttered something northpolish like, ‘Fuck this for a game of sodgers!’ I adjusted the mirror again and realigned the carbons. Through the observation slit in the projector’s belly a tiny but fierce sun could be viewed, could be manipulated.

  ‘Where you from, Becky?’

  ‘Govanhill.’

  ‘What does your man dae?’

  ‘Lorry driver.’

  ‘Long distance?’

  She nodded then in one stroke changed the game’s direction. ‘The longer the bloody better.’

  The doomed Eskimo was going under with unlikely stoicism, the world’s door closing on him with an icy slam. A loose joint skittered through the machine’s sprockets but made it without splicing. ‘Any kids?’ I queried.

  ‘Who knows? Haven’t been to Dagenham to find out.’

  ‘Is that where he is the noo – Dagenham?’

  She plucked at the hem that was her dress. ‘Must be – his belly pills were away this morning.’

  With that obscene rapidity Hollywood imposes upon ethnic minorities the relatives of the doomed Eskimo were already shrugging off his loss: many tasks to be completed – tundras to be ploughed, seal pups to be slaughtered, boots to be gnawed.

  ‘How come you escaped?’

  I looked across at her, ‘Eh?’

  ‘Never got married.’

  ‘Who says so?’

  ‘Me. You live with your sister in Crown Street.’

  Amusing all this confusing. A tripartite monster was breaking from its ironic egg, was clawing its way into the realm of possibility: Clay-Cullen-Lucas – Clayculluca!

  ‘Peggy’s really been filling you in eh?’

  An elegant shoulder shrug was her response. And what a shoulder to be shrugged at by. I imagined it to be of a peachy hue, much like the rest of her voluptuous body, this shade being the one that gets the greediest brushlicks on the pornographer’s palette. She’d me hanging out to dry, this chick with the long, restless legs in their tautly suspendered nylons. With one twitch of her classy clay she’d got me more lit-up than Osram’s test-bed. Not that I needed much enticement for I’d been on sexual iron-rations for far too long. As a result of this nooky-deprival I’d got me an affliction, a Midas-like syndrome only in this case the sense of sight and not touch was the transforming agent: everything my glance alights on takes on an erotic sheen. Objects like car headlamps, trees, violins, are effortlessly shaped by my spunkified vision into the contours of the ideal Woman, she who haunts boys’ dorms and monks’ cells. Talking about monks, why’s there so much hoo-ha about St Anthony’s battle with concupiscence? The guy endured nothing more than a randy itch, a mere storm in a scrotum, compared to the sexual siroccos which buffet me both by day’n by night, aye, more especially at night when lying alone in my austere cot I watch ceiling stains assume Siren shapes, see them become wet-lipped succubi with a coffee warmth to their nude hips, pale amber-haired houri beckon and tease, flaunting their taut, yet deliciously trembling rose-tipped – enough! that’s just my ceiling, by the way; as for my wallpaper, I’m expecting the vice squad to raid it any day now.

  Yawning sensually, so that beyond her opalescent lips the ruby arch of her mouth could be glimpsed, she stretched back in the basket chair which crackled with the sexual static her body was giving off. The hem of the demi-dress rode up the shine of her slightly parted legs. As if I was a brainless rustic who’d somehow or other managed with his simple pole to hook in a legendary fish, MacDougall, fearful that in my clumsiness I’d lose it, was delivering a series of near-panicky instructions: ‘Careful now . . . don’t jerk your rod . . . like that . . . play it gently . . . watch, you’re going to lose it . . . for heaven’s sake . . . give me the thing . . . Jeremiah was trying to get his tanners worth in as well, but when you’re on the point of landing the big one who’d give ear to a bumptious bailiff prattling about rules and regulations, or what penalties I might expect for this flagrant sexual poaching? Probably it’d all end in a soggy anti-climax and I’d fish out an old boot or something. The Woman, archetype of all women probably wasn’t there. Her ugly name, Becky, hinted as much. What I had in tow here was more likely to be just a blonde s
crubber, one well deserving those cheap epithets: like dolly-bird or teenage junk phrases such as a ‘right little raver’, ‘awesome chick’ and so on. Nevertheless, there I stood (MacDougall likewise) vibrating with lust. And what was this juvenile rigmarole coming from my mouth? Could I really be saying something as corny as, ‘Did Peggy no mention I’ve a helluva weakness for blondes?’ Aye, the grottiest of patter right enough but when the mysteries of the legs feminine are being inch by inch revealed to you, anything goes.

  ‘Have you?’ she asked huskily (goddammit, there’s no other adverb – her voice was definitely husky!)

  ‘Incurable.’

  With a whickery sigh of abandonment, the chair – No, let’s make it: with a feeling of tingly tumescence the projectionist (boy was he projecting!) fiddled with the mirror control knob. Decking her fag stub, with the sole of her sandal she reduced it to an amber smear on the floor. ‘I’d better get back,’ she said; that damned huskiness was still there.

  The projectionist moved in an oddly lateral kind of shuffle towards her, reminding you vaguely of poor old Quasimodo, whose hump, whose unfortunate protuberance he no longer found riseable – I mean, risible. ‘What’s the hurry?’ I asked her. ‘Big Snowy’ll catch anybody trying to escape.’

  Her hand was already on the doorknob, ‘Nice to’ve met you, Matt.’

  ‘Listen,’ I said with carnal urgency, ‘how about a wee drink later, eh? Just the two of us.’

  She played on me her very candid stare, at the heart of which I could see two nude and very active figures floating away on a chunk of blue ice. Seeing her this close, it was apparent that if she used a lighter make-up trowel and shed those eye-flappers, then she could give Kim Novak a run for her money, and that’s my highest accolade.

  ‘A wee drink?’ she repeated, her speech lightly peppered with sarcasm. ‘And what pavement had you in mind? Or are you thinking of packing the Eskimos off early to bed?’

  ‘Carry-out; half bottle of whisky; a few cans. Okay?’

  ‘What’d your sister say?’

  ‘Forget her.’ I took a firm grip on her arm and a slackening one on my morals. ‘Listen, there’s this mate of mines, got a pad in this very street. He’s working doon South just now, so I promised to keep an eye on things. You know what they’re like around here – screw their granny’s coffin for its brass. Well, what d’you say?’

  She hesitated. ‘It’d only be for a wee while?’

  Vigorous nodding on my part. ‘Aye, as long or as short as you like.’

  Astoundingly, her lacquered helmet was nodding, was giving me the come-on. Nod, nod. ‘On one condition,’ she added.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Make it vodka instead of whisky.’

  She moved quickly away passing through the doorway and going off down the stairs on her sexy red sandals. ‘Becky,’ I called down after her, ‘meet me in Marco’s chippy, Cally Road. Wait inside for me – it’ll be warmer . . .’

  Ever the thoughtful lover!

  She continued her descent without reply.

  ‘A loada shite!’ Paddy Cullen muttered. I wasn’t sure if this was a lag thought jailbreaking his mind or a comment on my immoral advances. It’d already dawned on me that Becky must’ve come up here expecting to find Paddy. Some broads can’t resist the challenge of trying to cook a bang from a wet squib. Maybe she’d seen Lucas heading for the Dog and got to thinking: ‘Aha, yon auld garter-twanger’s up there on his ownsome. Maybe I should –’ Naw, that couldn’t be; she’d mistaken me for Lucas hadn’t she? What if – any why not? – she’d spied me loping past in that sexy lithe way of mine’s? Who could blame her for murmuring, ‘Gawd, who’s that hunk, and where’s he happening?’ Yeah, a moviehouse Messalina with the instant hots for yours truly. I smirked at the inert Cullen. It’s your own fault, boyo, shoulda kept your powder dry.

  I glanced through a porthole at the screen then dashed round to the running projector. The carbon tips had drifted so far apart it looked like the movie was having a cardiac arrest. Working the feed knobs I pumped light onto the cyanotic screen. In the film itself things had been tobogganing along from one healthy patch of carnage to the next. Loads of whip-cracking, and berg-cracking, but a lot less wisecracking since a missionary dude had turned up to scatter his priestly frost around. The Eskimo chieftan was getting all hot under his furry kaftan because this alien, a right knobless ninny, had turned down his offer to spend a long night in the loghouse with his wife. Now I could’ve seen the guy’s point if what was on offer was your traditional bag of blubber sequinned with fishscales, and smelling like a breeze from Buckie, but he was turning down a tanned Californian chick with blinding teeth and a smile that would’ve melted an igloo in about fifteen seconds, a solar sister who, until now, had probably never encountered anything colder than the rocks in her daiquiris. But, here was the pious goofyballs saying in effect, ‘It’s bad luck but I can’t fuck . . .’

  Once Lucas returned I’d see about a carry-out. Paddy’d need one as well. Trouble was I hadn’t much bread on me right now. I still had the seven sheets for the Sherman’s pram: Phyllis hadn’t asked for it and I’d neglected to remind her. Tomorrow, being Saturday, there’d be lots of things to be bought, like loaves, milk, coffee and flank musquash coats. It was Cullen’s habit to stash his loot in the inside pocket of his jacket. I went in after it and fished out a bulky roll of folders. From it I took a couple of quid and stuffed it in to Paddy’s top pocket – this was for running expenses until he got back to me for the rest. It was an old arrangement between us, a way of safeguarding his dosh from his sister who was in the habit of going on midnight safaris through his pockets. Next, I did something that hadn’t been prearranged between us – a real oddball action: quickly, I opened the chain-catch of the small crucifix Paddy always wore around his neck. He gave a wild snort as I pocketed the thing but he soon subsided into his drunken stupor.

  Down there on the screen a polar bear, with one swipe of its massive paw, clouted the heart from the missionary’s chest.

  11

  CULLEN AND I floundered along the snowy pavement that lapped brightly against the grafitti-scarred hulk of an evacuated tenement. Sometimes he staggered forward in a kind of jerky trot and the snow registered his stuttering gait. A skilled observer following an hour or so later would’ve been able to figure out which of the two men was the most bevvied, though the fact that this turned out to be a weighty man in winklepicker shoes might’ve thrown him some. Big damp useless snowflakes kept seeding cataracts in my eyes and clogging my earholes. The deep boom of Cullen’s voice haunted nailed-up closes. He hit a patch of ice and almost decked it. I grabbed his arm. ‘Steady, Paddy.’ He backed against a snow-wrought railing. ‘It could’ve happened to anybody, Tam. Anybody. I told Purdon that. Don’t worry aboot it. You thought you were in the cludgie, right, against the weighing machine, right? I told Purdon that tae.’ He clapped my shoulder and tried for a palsy-walsy wink which didn’t quite come off. ‘Tam. Purdon’s for having your card. “Fucksake,” I says to’m, “barred just for being Moby Dick ower the jukebox!” Mind you, you shouldnae’ve made yon crack aboot Sinatra. Purdon’s hellish fond of Sinatra, so he is.’ He lurched from the railing and with its snowy imprint on his back he staggered forward a couple of steps. His head must’ve been birling for he raised his hand to it then groaned: ‘For ony favour tell the pilot to land this fuck’n thing.’

  We went slipping and sliding down a snow-clogged lane. The tale of the dishonoured jukebox continued. Cullen had obviously scuppered it by barfing into its mechanism though now he was attributing this to me. As if I’d up chuck on Frankie boy when there were croakers like Roy Orbison or Val Doonican to be aimed at. Paddy’s voice struck fuzzy echoes from the glazed brickwork of the lane wall. By the gaping doorway of a deserted workshop, an icy puddle fiercely clutched a collection of random junk; pramwheels, a headless doll, a cracked sink, a lavvy pan, and a paint-spattered boilersuit which lay spreadeagled like a slain man. />
  From the lane we came into a place where new apartments were being erected. In the snowy weavings of the wind as it played amongst the mounds of sheeted materials and whirled smokily between the raw concrete pillars of the rising structure, it looked like the future was shaping to be about as bleak as the slummy past. As we neared his close in Crown Street, Paddy suddenly stuck on his brakes and clutched my arm. ‘We’ve still time for a couple in The Mod.’ A skullcap of snow had gathered on his head and I got a foreglimpse of what Cullen might’ve looked like in senility, though the odds were heavily against him drawing the pension. He was for dragging me across the road to the Moderation Bar.

  ‘We’ll chap the door. We’re quoted, Tam.’

  A bizarre tug-of-war started with me trying to urge him forward while he sought to pressure me to the pavement edge. The mythical snowtracker would have seen on this spot a confusion of footprints then, on the edge of the tango of willpowers, two sets of footprints resuming their forward direction though those made by the winklepicker wearer showed a smudge of reluctance. From Cullen’s closemouth, which now echoed to his loud and friendly cries: ‘Ya bass, Tam – you should’ve woke me fuck’n earlier . . .’ a lone set of footprints set forth and with only a little meandering, went on without pause to Marco’s fish’n chip shop in Cally Road. No matter how skilled the snowtracker had been he would never in a month of Sundays have jaloused that these tracks had been made by the sexual scamperings of a Gorbals mouse which had taken advantage of the cat’s absence to come sallying from the skirting board for some nookery-pookery.

  12

  BECKY MCQUADE WASN’T where I’d arranged to meet her. The queue had installed itself as planned (those standing near its tail were appropriately snow-dappled), and Marco himself, with a vigorous play of his hairy arms, was scooping a gold and crackling catch from the smoky pan and with bouncy thumpings of his wire net was lodging it in the serving compartment. Amongst the sauce and pickle jars a white plastic wireless played Acker Bilk’s ‘Stranger on the Shore’. Outside, the set-designer, by the juxtaposing of the shop’s neon sign with snowflakes, had achieved the pleasing effect of confetti cascading down the steamy window.