Swing Hammer Swing!

by Jeff Torrington

  Exit a scruffy old man with a carry-out bag jammed beneath one arm. His downmouthed expression suggests that he has suffered a recent set-back, a disappointment of some kind. He pauses to finger-comb his snow-caked hair and as he does so the years drop from him so that soon he’s become a man in his mid-to-late twenties. He turns up the collar of his army jacket then suddenly an umbrella blooms in the snow’s coilings; from beneath this brolly a voice asks him:

  ‘How did you get here so soon?’

  She wore a plum-coloured maxi-coat with a twinned row of black buttons running in military style down its front. On her piled-up hair there was a light headsquare of a translucent lilac stuff in which silvery threads glittered. A massive black handbag was hooked over her shoulder. I ducked under the brolly’s awning on which snow fell with a light ticking sound then, taking her by the elbow, I guided her from view of anyone who might be watching us from the chip shop. Since I was taller than she was it was obvious that if we intended to chat on the hoof then I’d have to tote the umbrella, which suited me just fine since it offered both concealment and an immediate sense of intimacy.

  Watching my step I, nevertheless, put my foot in it.

  ‘But if you were seeing yon drunk eejit home,’ she asked no sooner had I done explaining, ‘then who was up in the projection booth?’

  Now there was a thing – I’d forgotten who I wasn’t!’

  I managed to flannel around this gaffe by telling her that Archie Killoch, the Planet’s unofficial nights-off man, had agreed to run the last reel so’s I could give the drunken Paddy a butty up the road. This seemed to satisfy her.

  ‘I think I saw’m,’ she said, nodding. ‘A wee man with a squint?’

  ‘Aye, that’s him.’

  Another lie. If there really was such an entity as the human soul then mines would be packing its astral bags and getting ready to ram the clenched gates of my body. What self-respecting spectre could endure being trapped inside this stewpot of mendacity.

  Up the wilderness pavement of the Scabby we came, a couple of ghosts from a Russian novel; me, laden with beer, vodka, and guilt, my companion – the bringer of light to a darkened Planet – plodding along at my side and thinking thoughts I’d never be party to, never hear vocalised. This amazed me, the two of us walking so intimately beneath that whispering umbrella, complete strangers who’d met only a hundred or so words ago, yet, already, here we were heading for an assignation as brazen as any hooker with’r client. Who whispered that’n my sinner ear? Jeremiah, of course, that dwarf on moral stilts. Are we Scots never to be free of such Knoxian nattering? Him and his grousemate, Calvin, a right pair of theological clots who’ve combined to form an embolus that soon shuts off the heart from its lifebeat. What’s needed is a modern day Walt Whitman to muck out this byre of a country, someone with fire in his belly like Willie Blake whose sturdy besom would’ve sent these pious turds flying.

  We went under Scobie Bridge with its dismal sound of dripping water and the depressing sound of pigeons moaning softly in the dark of the rusty girders. Becky’s fashion-boots made a brief erotic chatter on the shit-starred pavement then they were hushed again by the snow as we emerged from beneath the bridge. At my closemouth I collapsed the brolly and returned it to her. She shook snow-water from it then, keeping her head slightly lowered, said, ‘I’m only stopping for a wee while, remember . . .’

  ‘Aye, sure . . .’ I was nodding but she saw that my attention was elsewhere.

  ‘S’there something up?’

  I shook my head. No, there was nowt wrong. Something had in fact righted itself; the lamp-standard outside my close was once again tossing down its dim hoop of light. Into this dull but gratifying spotlight there slunk a gaunt Alsatian dog. It glanced in my direction, pausing for a moment as it did so, then passed once more into the outer darkness.

  13

  I OPENED MY eyes. Morning, peering through the Judas, tipped me the wink: another stay of execution. Comforting, but one shouldn’t get too complacent. I reached out to the bedside table for my cancer kit. The traveller’s clock, a luminous liar, claimed that it was nine-twenty a.m. Having been denied travel of any kind – its métier, after all – the thing’d taken to messing around with duration, going fast or slow, as the whim took it. Occasionally, it stopped for an entire hour before treacherously restarting. I hadn’t helped this ticker’s accuracy any by chucking it at Ramensky, a greedy wee bugger of a mouse who could crack any container, no matter how robustly sealed it was, just so long as there was something edible within to make the effort worthwhile.

  In the half-light the room looked like a cave into which the heaving ocean had puked. Blearily, my gaze took a tour of the night’s flotsam: clothes, mostly my own, hung over Rhona’s armchair where I’d flung them; some change had dropped from a pocket to spangle the carpet; on the table there was a muddle of beercans, glasses, and records sleeves. Outside, the wind barged around like a bad-tempered angel and hailstones tut-tutted on the window panes.

  Restlessly moving her legs, Mrs Rebecca McQuade, yesterday’s stranger, muttered something as she turned her face to the wall. MacDougall, who was up early this morning, suggested that I might tug back the sheets a little so that he could have a peep at her delectable derrière. I squashed out the dog-end then shoved the ashtray’n stuff back onto the bedside table . . . As I relocated my head in the pillow socket Jeremiah came on the air with the prediction that the harlot I’d bedded would bring the house down about my ears – an unimpressive forecast considering that the demolishers were scarcely more’n a block away. Spitefully, he began to hassle me about the penalties for adultery. Conning writs, subpoenas, and citations, from time to time he read aloud shadowy passages which he deemed relevant to my coming downfall. Last night delight, this morning penance – it was the usual Presbyterian penalty, the fine that had to be paid to the uttermost farthing.

  Nietzsche, the Leipzig Lip, had been hot on matters of conscience. That one-liner of his, how’d it go again? Aye: ‘If one trains one’s conscience it will kiss us as it bites . . .’ It was hard to figure why the iconoclast supreme could’ve taken on board yon eternal recurrence crap – the moronic notion which maintains that everything keeps repeating itself without deviation or change. Put simply, the theory asserts that yesterday hasn’t vanished forever but, like the merry-go-round horse, has merely passed from sight and is doomed to return exactly as it was before with the same rider, the same music, the same everything. This hellish idea is often cited as an explantion for the universal déjà vu experience the ‘I’ve been here before’ intrusion, time giving a little stutter.

  There’re yesterdays I’d shoot without hesitation should they poke their heads above history’s trench, that one, for instance, when my old man – he’d lain on this very spot – had risen, then begun to stuff his clothes into a battered suitcase. Because its locks had been broken he’d cut a daud from Ma’s clothes-rope and tied it around the case. He’d hoisted the case onto his shoulder and left us, looking like an old salt on his way to rejoin his ship. Much later I was to learn that he’d voyaged no further than the district of Langside where he’d tied up at the vacant berth of a Mrs Clare Cavendish, a name gobbled whole by Ma Clay’s memorable: ‘Yon scheming, double-dyed black widow . . .’ which, if anything, taught me that spite can jag as good a phrase from a fiddle as anything that can be wrought by the dour elbowing of virtue. Years afterwards, when slyly questioned by me, Ma Clay proved to be ignorant of the spiderish connections to her description. She maintained that by her remark she’d been referring to her rival’s terror of grey hairs and of her constant need to do ‘bottle’ with them. Nor, it seemed, was she aware of the black widow spider’s tendency to off its mates after its bobbin had been screwed. Aye, from out of the mouths of babes and sucklings – not forgetting wee aggrieved Gorbals womenfolk – can come some right foe-withering stuff. With a venom no footling spider would’ve secreted she’d invoked woe and damnation on the heads of Da Clay and the B
lack Widow, a contract which the gods in their usual sloppy manner had grotesquely overfulfilled.

  Adulterer! Jeremiah spitefully repeated in my ear. He’d a new noun to play with: adulter . . . adult – erer . . . adult error . . . Turning my head I looked out again at the cluttered set onto which, shaking the snow from our clothes, we’d made our dual entrance. At first we’d played our parts so woodenly, fumbling our lines, gesturing awkwardly, but as the fire took hold and the booze began to flow there’d entered a fluency, an assuredness (aye, cock-suredness, says MacDougall).

  Thomas, Thomas, try to remember who you’re supposed to be. You’re Matt Lucas, a film projectionist – remember? Okay? This isn’t your home. You’re a stranger here, too. Reinforce this. Don’t march directly to the correct cupboard when looking for glasses. Look around like you’re a bit lost. Make mistakes. Demonstrate your lack of familiarity. Now, let’s take it from, ‘D’you like some lemonade in your vodka?’

  ‘I’d prefer a touch of lime if you have it.’

  ‘Nope. Don’t think so. Let’s see what he’s got. How about this?’ From the cabinet’s clutter of bottles – most of them empty – I winkled a small tomato juice. ‘A Bloody Mary to go wae the bloody weather, eh?’

  She eyed the bottle I was flourishing. ‘Looks a bit stourie.’

  ‘Everything’s stourie in this dump.’

  She nodded. ‘I’ll risk it.’

  Kneeling by Clay’s record-player, a Pye ‘Black Box’, her fingers went prowling through the glossy sleeves of my stuff. ‘He has hellish taste in music, your pal. What’s he called again?’

  ‘Clay,’ I said then wished I hadn’t.

  ‘What’s his first name – Cassius?’

  ‘Tommy!’ I decided another pseudonym would’ve been too much to handle. A wee bit needled, I asked: ‘What’s wrang wae his records?’

  ‘Can’t stand Country’n Western.’ Her fingers roved to another compartment. ‘This is more my bag,’ she said: ‘Sinatra, Como, Buddy Holly, Englebert . . .’

  ‘I bet you’ve never even heard of Woody Guthrie, or, for that matter – Jimmie Rodgers.’

  ‘I’ve heard of Roy Rogers. Ta.’ She took the Bloody Mary from a frowning Matt Lucas. ‘I take it you’re into his kind of stuff.’ She shook her head. ‘Bellyaching on horseback, that’s what my Dad used to call it.’

  Who was this dumb chick kneeling there with her hemline around her throat, drinking Clay’s booze, and dumping on his discs? Who’d invited her? That randy wee bass, Lucas, that’s who. No wonder he’s cockeyed. Chrissake, she’s for playing the Singing Specs!

  ‘Those are hers,’ she said, indicating the Tin Pan Alley trash she’d spread on the carpet. No way was I going to play Royfuckn Orbison!

  ‘Hers?’

  ‘Aye, his wife’s – Mrs Clay.’

  ‘Who said he was married?’

  She shrugged. ‘Must be kinky, then. Or maybe that skirt over there was left by one of your strays? And yon talcum powder’s hardly –’

  ‘They busted up,’ Lucas said.

  ‘Where’s he now, then? This one,’ she added, handing me not Roy Orbison but that maker of euphonious farts, Mantovani. As I stuck the thing on the turntable I recalled the Donnybrook its purchase had provoked, a row that’d ended with Clay, the cowboy, threatening to mosey from the bunkhouse for keeps if his spouse so much as put a finger near the disc while in his presence.

  ‘He’s down in The Smoke,’ Lucas said, closing the lid gently on Clay’s beloved ‘Black Box’. I glowered at her. ‘Whadja mean – “wind up?”’

  ‘It looks old-fashioned enough,’ she simpered as she settled with her Bloody Mary in Mrs Clay’s armchair. Looking around herself, she added: ‘See yon old-fashioned kitchen they’ve got in the People’s Palace – this puts you in mind of it, only the one there’s a lot more tidy. Where’d all those beercans come from? You an alky or something? Place needs a good gutting. Talk about a coup.’

  One should keep it in mind, Mr Lucas, that these remarks are not being directed at you personally, but to a Mr Thomas Clay whose general domestic sloppiness is well known. The voddy drinker’s dismissal, however, of his ‘Black Box’ is not justifiable, it being a very efficient and superb example of mid-fifties accoustical engineering.

  ‘Nothing like a touch of auld Mantovani,’ said Lucas, becoming mesmerised by her frisking limbs. He took his drink, a stiff one, then went round the table and parked himself in Clay’s fireside throne. A right classy pair of gams, she had. Sexist stuff, that. Aye, you’d better believe it! Wonder if a half-bottle will do the trick. Have to. Where’s she off to now? Won’t sit’n her ass for five minutes. Better slap some more Ivan into’r. Don’t tell me she’s going to make some scabby remarks about Clay’s books.

  ‘What’s this Clay bloke work at?’ she asked as she ran a well-manicured nail along the books on a crowded shelf. The fire, gnawing with green teeth on a chunk of Granny Finnegan’s dresser, suddenly spat a flaming splinter onto the hearth rug. I quickly flicked it to safety; one must be careful not to burn one’s fingers.

  ‘He’s a banana-packer,’ I said.

  I knew she was going to laugh – and she did. ‘A banana-packer!’ (Chortle, chortle . . .) Probably, like me, she’d assumed the labels grew on the bloody things. ‘His books’re even worse than his records,’ said Rebecca McQuade, Professor of Literary Studies, dismissing in one brisk sentence some of the finest minds this and the other side of the Pond. At least there was some consolation for as she announced her dire verdict she put away, as a sort of visual exclamation mark, a fair measure of her drink.

  ‘Is that not lovely?’ She must mean the voddy, for surely she couldn’t be referring to Mantovani. She pounced now on a fat paperback, one I’d quarantined from the rest of my books. It’d come off the ‘Harold Robbins’ assembly line and been passed on to me by Toff Thompson who read the Glasgow Herald as a cover for his slovenly approach to literature and enjoyed the slightly dubious rep of being a pub intellectual. Becky flipped through the rape-infested pages. ‘Harold Robbins, he’s smashing, eh?’

  ‘He gave ink its great breakthrough,’ said Matt Lucas, the sex-mad toad. He took her empty glass from her, muttering as he did so something Hollywoodish like, ‘Can I freshen that up?’

  ‘I just loved The Carpetbaggers,’ she said as she took her now replenished glass for a walk around the kitchen, a wee tour of inspection. Clay wasn’t too happy about the way she poked and pried, but Lucas, who saw her as the means whereby bolts of erotic lightning could be made to play over his naked body, smiled indulgently. ‘Are there any snapshots of them?’ she now asked.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The Clays – snapshots?’

  ‘Naw – don’t think so.’

  Her prowling was definitely making Clay jumpy. All she’d to do was open the second-top drawer of the dresser and there she’d find a photograph of Mr and Mrs Clay on their wedding day, the pair of them fresh from Martha Street Registry Office, standing, looking slightly stunned, by the Cenotaph in George Square. He’d often wondered why Cullen, his best man, had chosen that particular background. Maybe fallen bachelors and fallen soldiers were one and the same in his book. Becky began to mouth a spate of daft questions about the Clays: what they looked like; what she wore; why they’d busted up – stuff like that. Lucas, swallowing lager from a punctured can, responded as best he could to such nosiness, but he saw clearly that he was in danger of being upstaged; if he didn’t start to assert himself soon then the vodka gurgling all the way down her throat would be on a wasted trip.

  ‘Tell you one thing,’ she said, moving to the sink where she played with the tap, looking amused by its quaintness, ‘they’re as different as chalk’n cheese.’

  ‘How d’you figure that?’

  ‘Stacks of ways. Not just from his records and daft books. Other things like –’

  Something gratifying had happened in the world of vacuous violins. ‘It’s stuck,’ Becky needlessly said. I nodded. If
I’d been a stylus playing Mantofanny that’s exactly what I would’ve done. I rose and crossing to the record player wiped the syrup from the turntable and stuck on some gritty Earl Bostic. A mending of glasses now took place. ‘You trying to get me squiffy?’ she asked with a titter. This was more like the thing. Aye, this was the way to Nookyville!

  ‘Are you close pals then, Matt? You’n the banana-packer?’

  ‘Like blood brothers. For a shandy?’

  ‘Okay. More lemonade than beer but.’

  I went over to the drinks cabinet to do the needful. This bugger, Clay, kept intruding, making his presence felt.

  ‘D’you work Becky?’

  She reached out for the shandy. ‘Mmm, nice,’ she said, sampling it. She lowered the glass. ‘I’m a trouser machinist. Work for a Jew up in Pollokshaws. Bloody sweatshop. Wages wouldn’t buy poverty. The boss wears a black tie on pay day, so he does.’

  She came over to resettle herself in Rhona’s chair. Despite the brevity of her dress she’d somehow contrived to hitch it up even further. As far as concealment went she would’ve been better with the bloody thing off. She knew she had me on the boil all right which was why her legs continued to frisk all over the shop.

  ‘I suppose this dump’s for coming doon shortly?’ She looked around my cracked cave and nodded. ‘About time, eh?’ She took some more vodka. ‘See that Govanhill, going to the dogs as well so it is. Pakis moving into it in droves. Brown faces everywhere you turn.’

  The Pakistani, the Indian, and the cook from Canton, are the Eskimos of our society. Cold-shouldered, frozen out, they live their lives in that wilderness our prejudice has exiled them to, the frigid reservations we’ve afforded them in grudging payment of our colonial debts. Is it any wonder that they make us feel uneasy, those spicy shadows trotting at our heels, and who beg nothing save the aim of mutual recognition, something we’re loath to bring ourselves to offer lest it demeans us, such a fate being anathema to a race of cultural pygmies.