A rapid eye-rake down the three-thirty field produced a twitch for a nag called Caesar’s Revenge. It dawned on me why: Caesar was the late Tammy Cook’s Alsatian dog, the very one that’d taken time out to drop by Joe Fiducci’s shop to give me the nod. Caesar’s Revenge was an 8-1 prospect while the plodder Urquhart had hexed was evens fav. From my Hardship Pocket, a wee zipped aperture sewn into the lining of my combat jacket for no purpose I could think of, except maybe for a suicide pill or the last bullet, I dug out the pram money, seven pounds in all. About to take two notes from it I changed my mind. Mooney nodded when I asked’m if he was hitting the bookies later. I gave’m the bread. ‘Caesar’s Revenge in the three-thirty, Pat. On the nose.’ He looked at the fiver, looked at me, shook his head, then tucked the five spot away. Next, jamming his mouth close to my lughole, shouting against the pub’s uproar, he wanted to know if the horse was a ‘good thing’. ‘Naw,’ I shouted back, ‘I was just getting fuck’n jiggered humpin that heavy fiver around!’
Suddenly, the pub’s spiralling decibel ratio dived to a low-voiced buzzing in which the name ‘Salter’ was busily repeated. And there was the man himself, a thin streak of misery in a snow-speckled bunnet, brown overcoat and black shoes, the handle of his white stick cleeked over his arm. Today he was being escorted into the Dog, not by his sister, Bunty, as was the custom, but by Danny Dimes, his next-door neighbour. As Dimes, a wee bit self-consciously, led Salter to his favoured corner – it was already being rapidly vacated for him. Somebody at the doms table, Billy Bannerman, I think it was, shouted, ‘Hey, Danny, has Bunty told’m?’
Dimes stopped, too quickly as it happened, and Salter, lurching from his grasp, collided with a table and sent a beermug crashing to the floor. Salter, lost at the heart of silent darkness, would know nothing about this mishap, for him only the valved droning of his blood as it made its perilous circuits, and the touch of hands as they guided him to his seat.
Dimes lifted a jagged slice of glass. ‘Told’m what?’
‘AboutTalky?’
‘What aboot’m?’
Colin Cowie, standing near Dimes, chipped in. ‘Talky got hamburgered wae a bus in Croon Street.’
‘Christ,’ said Dimes, ‘I hidnae heard. Is he deid, then?’
Cowie who was infamous for his mordant humour, nodded, ‘They think maybe his tongue’ll pull through if they can catch it long enough to get it nailed doon.’ This provoked a burst of laughter, but some of the punters in the kneecreaker division were shaking their heads at the disrespect of it.
‘Where’s Bunty, then?’ Jock Gebbie asked Dimes.
‘Her leg’s in plaster.’
‘The auld fella knows, does he?’
‘Aye, he was there when it happened.’
‘When Talky got killed?’
‘Naw, when Bunty fell on her arse and broke her ankle.’
Salter, seated, his cap removed, now placed his hands palm upwards on the table, the usual signal to Talky to indicate that he was ready to converse.
‘Hey, Danny,’ Bert Shaw shouted, ‘can you dae that deaf’n dumb patter?’
Cowie snorted. ‘You kiddin – that bass couldnae spell egg.’
Danny bridled at this. ‘Look, I was asked tae bring’m. So I’ve brung’m. That’s it.’ He dropped the daud of glass into the pan Stirrat had brought to the scene then, turning, he muscled his way to the counter and ordered a drink. Salter’s usual tipple, a bottle of strong ale, was already on its way to him. Those punters sitting near to him had a sort of skulking look about them, as if shamed by their inability to rap out something meaningful on that proferred palm. How was yon palm-patter done? Maybe along the lines of the grid system lags used to rap to each other through adjoining walls. Salter sat in our midst, an affront to all of us. There he was, hunkered down in his soundless pit, awaiting Talky, the lantern of his life. For some reason back into my mind swam the image of yon shark I’d seen on the telly last evening, the brute’s teeth biting a chunk from the diver’s airline, then its victim tumbling away into the suffocating muds of the abyss, beyond all hope of recall. The plight of Salter was similar; he too was flailing around in the oppressive night of his sealed senses. Though he sat very still and looked completely calm who knew what internal convulsions were wracking the man.
‘Somebody should tell’m,’ Gebbie said. ‘Cannae have him just sittin there.’
‘Should be ta’en hame, so he should,’ said another.
‘Hey McLaurin,’ shouted Gebbie, ‘Your auld man was cornbeef, was he no?’
McLaurin, at the doms table, frowned. ‘Aye, ya daft bugger, but he wisnae blin and dumb intae the bargain.’
‘Here,’ said Tipsy Tomlinson who claimed to’ve been drunk since VJ night – and looked it, ‘I’ll get’n touch wae’m. Watch this.’ And we did, every man jack of us (big Milly included) as in almost total silence Tipsy staggered to Salter’s corner. He stood there for a time, one hand on the table propping him up while with the other one he searched himself, going from pocket to pocket but bringing out zilch. What was he looking for? A pen? Some money? His specs? Nobody asked. The pocket-patrol was just one of Tipsy’s ‘things’, one of his pub oddities. A shrink would’ve probably suggested that by his public body-search Tipsy was externalising his anxious desire for cohesive selfhood, that his self-frisking was symbolic of his desperate attempt to ‘get it together’. Which is about what you’d expect from those theorising assholes. Me? I figure it’s Tipsy’s way of playing for time while he waits like the rest of us for the surprise of his next action. And a surprise it proved to be. Giving up his search he now raised his right hand with a wiggly motion, like a fakir putting on the fluence. Next, he bent over the table and made passing movements over Salter’s open palm, then his own palms rose with his gaze to the rafters but soon sank again as in a low sottish voice he crooned: ‘Talky, are you there? Talky, can you hear me?’ He rapped his knuckles three times on the table then again sought spiritual aid from the rafters as with both hands held aloft he intoned: ‘Talky if you’re here – send us a sign!’
It came almost immediately and, surprisingly enough, via auld Dan Murchie who, sitting to the right of Salter’s table suddenly raised his gouty left leg then sounded one of the longest, the loudest, and the most ambitious renditions of bowel music ever to be produced by the anal sphincter. The Fart of the Century, it was a stentorian stinker with the collective energy of a dozen Krakatoas simultaneously blowing their tops. It was a fart with ‘professional’ written all over it and beside which the raspers the gifted Paddy Cullen could summons from his snack-pipes were revealed for what they really were – the prissy pimpings of a gifted amateur. To hear a fart being transformed into jazz, raw bowel gas becoming an art form was enough to bring tears to the eye. Well, at least it did to those sitting in the immediate vicinity of Murchie. As the last triumphant notes of ‘the impromptu’ faded away the pub erupted into wild, uncontrollable laughter and for a long time bedlam reigned. Dan Murchie remained seated on his ‘instrument’ while grinning punters crowded around him to shake his hand and offer him drinks. Meanwhile, a million light years beyond laughter, Salter sat awaiting the touch of a human hand. The sight of him prompted me to split. It was appalling that he’d never ever get in on the joke.
The door flapped open and in came Archie Killoch. He looked like a snowman who was trying out walking for the first time. There was certainly something bedevilling his gait – one foot seemed keen on getting to the bog while the other one was more intent on heading for the counter. ‘Archie,’ I said, tugging at his snowy sleeve, ‘Paddy was looking for ye.’ He replied in fluent Martian then stumbled to the bar where Freddy Green was heard to exclaim, ‘Clear the decks, lads – I think it’s one of ours!’
Behind me, Gunner Langford was saying, ‘and another thing Mister – No sit doon, I’m no finished – another thing, it was what was left of the 26th Armoured Brigade. That’s right. Rommel sent in a tank column led by a captured Valentine – took every
body on, that did . . .’
I went out into the snow. Hammer’n Tongs were shaking hands. The snow had plastered them so that they looked like a pair of amiable spooks. One of them, Tongs, I think it was, gave me a stupid wink as I crunched past. I tried to dismiss the image of Old Salter, sitting there with his outheld hand, dumbly pleading for the aim of meaningful touch. And Talky, himself – what of him? He’d be laid by in a drawer in the mortuary, his tongue at long last idle and unmoving in his frozen mouth. Such thoughts did I entertain as I made my way through the snow to my date with destiny – my fateful meeting with the Banana Baron.
18
‘THE WAGES AREN’T much cop,’ Uncle Billy admitted as we sat by a blazing fire in his drab little igloo, ‘but at least it’s better’n your dole money, and it’s regular.’
Steam rose from my soaked jeans, and already my hair was beginning to dry. In a corner, a muted TV set huffily flicked through its programme of unwatched sporting events: two heavyweight boxers were to be seen swapping ponderous punches, fathoms deep beneath a sea of sadistic faces; then, two Asiatics, armed with tiny bats, began to twitch a ping-pong ball from one to the other, an activity made all the more meaningless by the imposed silence.
The living-room was one of those narrow closets into which for generations working-class people’ve been stuffed. A closed fist of a room: scuffed carpets and faded wallpaper. Near the TV set was a bookcase, its contents in chaos like an idiot’s mind. By the window an empty birdcage and on the far wall a mirror reflected sharp angles of furniture and caught a glimpse of William of Orange, mounted on a white charger as he triumphantly crossed Boyne water, a tatty print which was complemented by a photograph of Glasgow Rangers FC.
It turned out that Billy boy was really hooked on bananas. With an enthusiasm I found laughable he informed me that the nana world was up for grabs. If I got stuck in, really rolled my sleeves up, why there was every possibility of me rising to the dizzy heights of Cutter, or even Weigher. From there it was but a short step to go on and claim the Brown Coat. The B.C. is the Oscar of the nana-packing world; to don this garment proved you’d become Staff, a position which entitled you to the stupendous windfall of a free, aye, FREE hand of bananas every week. From then on it was promotion all the way, unless, of course, you were unlucky enough to get nipped on the arse by a scorpion or copped it in the neck from a bad-tempered Black Widow spider. The gab now veered to the interesting creepy-crawlies to be encountered in a banana warehouse, a subject which naturally brought us around to discussing Ma Carlyle.
‘How’s Lettie’s back these days?’ Billy enquired.
About as dilapidated as her front, I was tempted to say, but instead registered a shoulder-shrug.
‘Aye,’ Billy sighed, ‘she’s put in a sore time of it with that back of hers – ever since she was a young lassie, it seems!’
That my mother’n wrath had ever been a ‘young lassie’ just wasn’t on: I knew for a fact that she’d arisen fully-plated from Loch Ness between the Wars. To my dismay, the Banana Baron, mumbling something about ‘auld snapshots’, rose and crossed to the bookcase.
The album which he placed across my lap exuded a crypt-like odour, a cold resting place for its stiffened humans. Leaning over me, Billy’s banana-blunted forefinger guided me through the Carlyle/Dalrymple menagerie, a tedious procession of aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces. A pale moth of a girl in the chrysalis of a wedding gown emerged, to my disbelief, to be Letitia Dalrymple on her wedding day, and the rumpled gamp suspended from her arm proved, in fact, to be Archie Carlyle, himself, her brand-new husband and the elder brother of Billy here. Letitia Dalrymple Carlyle always managed to imply that she’d married beneath herself. Right enough, how wee Archie persuaded her to share the same cloud of confetti was a real brow-wrinkler; the short time I’d known him he’d been about as dynamic as a grease-spot but maybe – who knows? – when he’d been a young buck he’d something going for’m. A locksmith to trade he’d been, but I figure he’d never succeeded in cracking the cage of contempt his wife’d thrust’m into as punishment – despite the boon of her windfall – for not really making it in the business world.
By chance during this all but comatose crawl through the album’s pages I came across a snapshot of Rhona. She must’ve been around eight or nine at the time it’d been taken. She wore a billowing white dress and was to be seen tossing breadcrusts to down-swooping seagulls on Rothesay Harbour. How innocent she looked with the sunlight pouring cleanly upon her and no shadow of the hawk, Clay, yet fallen on her virginal world. ‘Cast your bread upon the waters and after many a day it’ll get soggy and sink . . .’
‘That’s me to the left of the banner.’
Billy was pointing to a besashed and bumptious-looking punter who, along with others in Orange Lodge regalia, marched resolutely through a Catholic-inspired rain. ‘A grand Walk that was,’ reminisced Billy. ‘Terrible weather, but we turned out in strength just the same.’ His finger jabbed the photograph. ‘See that fella there, his boy was all set to sign for Rangers when he got killed in a docks accident. Aye, John Purdie he was called.’ I was tempted to ask’m if a heavy Catholic had fallen on Purdie junior, but held my wheesht: the boring journey from Victoriana to religious mania had served its purpose: surreptitiously, I undid the top button of my casual shirt.
‘Will you try a wee sherry?’ Billy asked as he returned the album to the bookcase. ‘It’s a wee tate somebody left last Ne’erday.’ The ‘sherry’ turned out to be a close relative of the ‘Jungle Juice’ Glesca winos traditionally dement themselves with, something I’d expected from the pains he was taking to hide the bottle’s label. ‘I’ll have a wee dribble myself, just to keep you company like,’ he said as he splashed a rim-hanger into his glass.
We sat there for a time in drowsy silence by the fire, looking, I thought, like one of those telly commercials: ‘Billy’s Brew’ll make you Spew!’ On the sideboard a clock started awake and began to froth chimes. It was a handsome piece which had probably been presented to Billy after he’d cut his millionth banana. ‘Is that the time already?’ Billy exclaimed with an urgency that suggested he was about to catch a jet plane to Venezuela, or was on the point of receiving a visit from the Lord Provost himself. After scattering a few more chimelets the clock dozed off again. Uncle Billy subsided with it, a clockroach safely under its stone. A quick image flashed across my mind, that of Granda Gibson’s hand flicking back the silvery lid of his skull-shaped tobacco bowl and his fingers tearing at the orangey shag within. It looked a painful process, but the skull – it’d been nicknamed ‘Cripps’ – had gone on grinning until the day it took a tumble and scattered its amber brains on the hearth. Why that image? Who knows? Billy, the banana beetle, turned his antennae to the ghostly TV set, fed on its flickerings for a few moments then, gushing little sighs, reabsorbed himself in prehistoric man’s telly – the fire with its languid blades of flame.
‘Are you still scribbling away then, Tommy?’
He asked this as if he was enquiring about some disease which might not yet’ve run its course. My shrug seemed to signal that a cure’d been effected. ‘Ach, aye,’ he said, ‘writing books is fine for them that’s nothing more to do with their time.’ With a surprising expertise for one who claimed to be a teetotaller he flipped over the last of his drink then placed the drained glass on the ledge of the tiled fireplace. ‘Anyway,’ he announced, indicating the wally dug on the mantlepiece – a cretinous-looking beast with a sawn-off face – ‘your books’ll soon be as auld-fashioned as one of these things. D’you not think so yourself? This time, next century, they’ll be playing bingo in your libraries. Mark my words.’
Aye, nuclear bingo: clickety-click the planet is sick.
I undid another shirt button.
‘You’ve not’d much luck with the book I’m hearing.’
That had to be the understatement of the year. The novel, written by me during my self-allocated sabbatical, had been rejected four times thus far. I�
�ve no doubt that behind my back the family were having a good snigger. Rhona of course had been the loyal exception though I admit that her piteous expressions when the thing limped home battered and bloodied by franking stamps, were harder to bear than her sister’s outright sarcasm: ‘Has your boomerang got back yet, Patton?’ she’d enquire, while her husband Jack would give the knife in my back an extra twist by asking if I’d managed to sell any of my daubs? Which meant that he presumed I’d jacked in the railways to pursue a painting career. Maybe I should have. The manuscript had begun to show the bruises from its days, weeks, and months buried in the ‘slush piles’ of various publishing firms. After it’d been returned for the third time it had scorch marks on several of its pages, as if someone had been trying to thrust the thing into the furnace. Last time out it returned stained by beetroot juice and ketchup which suggested the reader had considered eating it then chickened. So far on this its latest journey southwards, it’d produced an acknowledgement of receipt then thereafter entered into the agonising silent phase which apparently the current Apollo spaceship will encounter when, going behind the moon, it will temporarily sever contact with its Control in Houston.
Actual criticism of the novel by its rejectors was very thin on the ground, although the consensus of opinion seemed to indicate that its main weakness lay in its apparent ‘lack of plot’. You can bet your granny’s boots and braces it lacks plot. Plots are for graveyards. I’d rather drag my eyeballs along barbed wire than read a plotty novel. You can almost see the authors of such contrived claptrap winding up their childish prose toys, before sending them whirring across their fatuous pages in search of ‘adventures’. See how perkily they strut and stride; observe the zany intermingling patterns they make with their inky bootees; listen, and you’ll hear their valorous hearts grinding within their heroic breasts.
Swing Hammer Swing! Page 15
