‘Holy Shit,’ I cried as Lucas, taking the full impact of the autobub, went somersaulting over its roof, seemed to loiter in mid-air for a generous moment – his rags bravely flying – then, abruptly, pitched face-downwards onto the wet tarmac, with the wet schlopping sound of an exploding melon.
Chunks of what happened next shift from fact to fade; the pen croaks mid-sen – another medium must be sought:
Say, how’s this grab you? A camera perched shoulder-high, panning left to right to simulate head-movement.
You mean like we’re inside the shroudy’s head?
Got it in one.
Then we what?
Add heartbeats.
You flipped? Maybe you want heavy breathing as well?
Sure, why not?
I’ll tell you why not – coz the fuck’n thing’s morgue meat, tomb trash, as dead as your braincells. How come its pump’s going badoing-badoing and its breath’s making like a hacksaw when it’s fit only for carrion and other Gypo jerkoffs. Come again?
‘What about some scarabs?’
‘Scarabs? The beetle jobs you mean? Yeah, I might buy that: grave bugs scuttling across his non-existent vision. Okay, tell Connie to buy a bagful of scarabs. Oh, and while she’s about it; a half-dozen bagels. Now, let’s shift some celluloid, okay? Action . . . roll’m . . .
The mummy lies on its back at the bottom of a dry well. Dressed in the waxy folds of its death garb it bears on its forehead and face the bandages of Nekhem and Hathor. It sees faces staring down at it from the well’s rim, sees too the blood-red lotuses that are flowering on its delved chest and looted belly. It can delay no longer. Its ka flies up the well’s parched throat, goes past the faces with their expressions of spurious concern and goes out, out into the light. Two men are to be seen running from a strange chariot towards the well into which the spectators still morbidly peer. A door opens in a strange spherical machine. Can this be the ferry to the underworld? From this metal bubble there begins to ooze a blanched lifeform that looks like a gigantic larva . . .
Cut! Goddamit – CUT!
Burnett re-entered the office minus the steps but bearing in their place a large framed picture. This he laid before me then he began his usual set-to with his chair which he won on a throw and an outright submission. Once he was enthroned, had got himself tucked in to his satisfaction, he gave the air a critical sniff or two. ‘What’s that stink? Something crawled in here and died?’
My feet snailed back into their snow-bleached shoes.
Burnett slammed the screwdriver back into the drawer. He nodded at the picture. ‘A promise is a promise, eh?’ He tossed a scrap of mummy-wrapping across the desk. ‘Here, it’s a bit stoury. Give it a wipe.’ I rubbed the rag across the greasy glass: Clark Gable’s mouldering grin became all the more exposed. ‘Something’s gotten to’m,’ Burnett admitted, ‘but you can still tell who he’s about.’
I mumbled my thanks. Useless to point out that I’d been promised Alan Ladd: a playboy for a cowboy! Ach, so what? A necrotic hero was in tune with this pisser of a day. Burnett had decided to buy the hell-ticket to inner calm, that deceptively short journey it takes a glassful of Scotch to get from hand to mouth. Having been banned from liquor due to his H.B.P. condition, Burnett’s drink had the added flavour of being a risk-cocktail. Silly old bugger – his face was already as lit-up as a Halloween tumshy.
He squinted at the whisky bottle with a knowing eye and didn’t offer to recharge my glass. ‘Evaporation, eh,’ he said. ‘The very blight of the spirit trade. John Barleycorn having his pocket dipped, as someone neatly put it!’ With his replenished glass tucked into the meaty folds of his hand, he wriggled himself into a more comfortable position. ‘Tell me,’ he said a few whisky sips later, ‘that chap with the woolly hat thing and the lumberjacket – y’know, him with the tash who warned us against moving Matthew before he went to phone an ambulance. Who was he – a relative?’
I nodded. ‘Matt’s nephew.’
‘How’d he happen along?’
I shrugged. ‘Coincidence, I suppose.’
Synchronicity, old Jung had dubbed what he called the meaningful coincidence, the engine of causality, with its long train of bumper-to-bumper freight-trucks, each of them stuffed with common sense, coming off at the catch-points, making a wreck of the so-carefully-laid plans of those who’d invested in their assured arrivals.
It turned out that the stranger hadn’t been McQuade after all. In fact, he’d been who he’d claimed to be: Billy Lucas, Matt’s nephew. He’d gone in his car to break the news to Matt’s wife then had driven her to the hospital. Burnett and I had ridden there in the ambulance. A surrealistic scene: the groaning mummy; the medic who’d been unable to conceal his smirk, savouring this one – a juicy anecdote to relate over xmas dinner.
After another gulp of Scotch, Burnett settled on me a scrutiny so intense that I admit to’ve been fazed by it. Eventually, down the tunnel of this gaze I saw, heading my way and fast, the jinking lights of a Rubberland special, a runaway train of thought, its compartments chokeful of cockamamie notions.
‘I’m thinking of writing a letter to the Lord Provost,’ he announced.
‘Oh, aye?’
‘Can you guess what about?’
I shook my head.
‘I’m going to make a last effort to persuade His Worship to preserve one of the Gorbals’ most famous landmarks, so that it might become a sort of historical reference site, a place where parents can bring their children, and teachers their pupils, a focus for both recreational and cultural pursuits.’
He nodded then removed his hat. Soon a faint haze of steam rose from his bald patch. He placed the hat on the desk. ‘You know, of course, to which landmark I’m referring?’
‘Shug Wylie’s shithoose?’
His eyelids flickered, ‘Facetiousness is undoubtedly one of your most annoying traits, Thomas. Well?’
I’d half a notion but I sung dumb.
He raised a hand and gave it a sort of circular flourish. ‘This, of course.’
‘You want the Provost to preserve your hand?’
‘I mean, as you well know, this cinema.’
‘I see. A sort of “Save the Planet” campaign?’
He nodded. I put on I was giving the goofy idea some thought. I don’t know why – I just did. What a character he was. Last year it’d been battery hens: he’d wanted to install a dozen or so of the clucking things in the boilerhouse. Now this latest equally dumb notion. ‘C’mon Oswald,’ I said. ‘You know the score. Folks’ve jacked in the movies. It’s telly and your bingo, these days.’
‘I suppose,’ Burnett conceded, ‘that the Planet’s function as a cinema might cease, but, again, maybe not. It could become a specialised centre, a Film Club, even. Why not even a theatre? Yes, I admit it’s a bit dilapidated but the structure’s still perfectly sound.’
I shook my head. ‘The game’s a bogy, Oswald. Why no admit it?’
But once he was in the saddle of an optimistic notion Burnett was a difficult man to dislodge. In fact Burnett’s optimism, like Sophie Tucker’s corsets, knew no limits.
‘Take the People’s Palace,’ he went on, ‘step in there and you’re immediately up to your neck’n history.’ He leaned both his arms on the desk. ‘So, why not something similar, only even more localised, for the Gorbals? After all, we’re talking about an area that had its origins in the thirteenth century. It’s my opinion that ‘The Gorbals House of History’ would prove to be a powerful cultural magnet. All sorts of artifacts could be displayed – not just your mugs, jugs and wally dugs, but working models too, living tableaux, people dressed in costumes of the past, maybe a reconstruction of a ward in the Leper Hospital . . .’
Ay’n stairheid rammies and closemouth shirrikens could be enacted by out-of-work thespians, while Tobacco Lords and Snuff Barons, not forgetting lepers, deepsea divers and the odd mummy or two could be seen strolling around. Sundry items of sentimental value to be contemplated; a stank
lid from Adelphi Street, a fedora that had once been worn by a likeable petty crook, Babs the Flyman; the last pair of mule shoes to be sold by the High Walk Shoe Company of Cumberland Street; the moothie and bone clappers that’d belonged to popular entertainer, Darkie Marshall; Albert Wheeler’s first racing cycle; a fitba jersey once worn by Tommy Ring of Clyde FC (The Bully Wee): A Barber’s Chair, made by local craftsman, John Gibson; a pub mirror from The Salty Dog Saloon; a pair of projectors from The Planet Cinema; remains of a fish supper eaten by wife-murderer, Charlie Coutts during his brief incarceration in the Lawmoor Street dub-up; and yet another pair of shoes, shiny ones worn by John Clay of the Scabby, a man who could’ve rivalled the Great Saphenous for his disappearing acts; a pair of Benny Lynch’s boxing gloves . . .
At the Sales Points patrons would be able to purchase wee model slums that tinkled ‘I Belang Tae Glesca’ when their roofs were raised. But why stop there? You could have ‘Pongs from the Past’, bottled nostalgia in fog-grey flasks which vile exiles could unstopper, then after a good sniff, say: Gee, hon, don’t that take you back – a stapped Gorbals’ john!’ To which his spouse would rapturously exclaim: ‘And sugarallywater, Elmer – is that not megasignificant!’
‘What d’you think?’ Burnett was asking.
I nodded, ‘I think maybe you’re on something.’
The sarcasm arising from the omission of ‘to’ in my reply seemed to’ve been lost on him. What he took to be my endorsement of his optimistic plan kindled his enthusiasm all the more. Once, back’n the old days, having spilled some sugar, I’d swept it onto a shovel then had thrown it on the fire. Flames had immediately shot up the lum, licking into that blind place where the Sootmonster lived and in whose black throat there had started up this ominous growling which, in turn, fanned shrieked recriminations from Ma Clay: ‘You great lummox, you’ve set the bliddy chimley oan fire!’
There was no doubting that Burnett’s ‘chimley’ had well and truly caught, for his stack began to spit forth sparks, smoke, flame, glowing coals, aye and even fire-bars, as they’d say on the railway to describe an overtaxed loco on a slippery slope. In a very short time, so pervasive was his prodigious gift for optimism that the wreck of the foundered SS Planet, through the portholes of which had been projected every human cataclysm from earthquake to heartbreak, began to look rescuable; not intact, of course – no hope of that – but in good enough shape to return to existence in some modified but socially useful form.
On every object he uncovered down there midst the dull corals of ruin he bestowed his uplift, prising them from Gravity’s tenacious grasp. In other words, I’d allowed myself to be suckered by the old conman, had let’m take me for a ride in a yellow submarine, the hull rivets of which sprung more readily than did the buttons from a glutton’s waistcoat.
Although, so far, he’d fared reasonably well in his foray into the skimpy constructions of the so-called future, it was really in the past that Burnett thrived best. There, he could boldly unwrap mummified memories, safe in the knowledge that they couldn’t collapse into dust at the merest touch. The past was a happy hunting ground for him; he never tired of finding new routes into the great Once Was. Steamrollered by his phenomenal powers of recall, I’d often left his company flatter than one of those freaky figures Dunne peopled his duo-dimensional world with. But not today. I was for slinging my hook real soon.
There’re fewer fates more grisly than becoming a human shitpan for some boring old asshole, for that’s what the nostalgiac’s victim becomes, a humble receptacle into which, after a wearying struggle to open history’s sphincter, there drops, not the enormously astounding stool all that writhing and grunting had presaged, but instead a tedious procession of memory tollies – plop . . . plop . . . plop . . . plop . . . ‘I remember,’ Burnett said, ‘must’ve been back in the thirties, when you were just a wrinkle on your Daddy’s brow, Thomas, that I . . . plop . . . plop . . . plop . . .’
I left the Planet about twenty minutes or so later. Not long afterwards a movie idol found himself whirling through the snow-filled air to land in a street skip which was already crammed with domestic junk – a sad end for Gable! The snow-machine had been left at max drive, a rate of dispersion that’d soon exhaust its flake-stock and clear the way for the traditional grey xmas. Within a few minutes I was blotted out, invisible except for a pair of eyeballs jerking along, a snow mummy seeking the bleak comforts of its sarcophagus.
I compile a status report: I am hungry; my arm is sore; my feet’re wet; my lungs ache. Ergo, I must be more than a pair of jiving eyeballs. From what source arise these reports on the pangs that beset my corpus crusty? In one of his fascinating, but, alas, flawed books, Dunne had included a droll sketch of an artist at his easel who was painting himself painting himself painting himself, and so on until the multiplying replicas have shrunk to a dot in infinity. Serialism! Watch out for that crafty cousin with his slippery solipsisms.
Once I’m inside my cracked little igloo I’ll light the whale-oil lamps then plonk my chilled feet onto a gourd of hot seal blood. The need to tune-out affects the toughest of Eskimos from time to time. Wearied by the sight of the replicating artist he seeks out a wee patch of silence, like an ant creeping under leaf shade, to doze and dream . . . doze and dream . . . in blessed detachment from the terrestrial predators who come seeking for’m but go sniffing on by.
Tranquillity.
There’s a jewel of a word. A man could keep warm for weeks on the sparkle of it alone. Tranquillity – a mantra for the closing moment. Tran-kwill-itee. That’ll suffice. I leave Nirvana to the prime-leaguers. The mindpeace which I seek is like all cosmic treasures to be found admidst the lowly and is close at hand – Marco’s Fish’n Chip Emporium, to be exact. You dig? Aye, a big fish in crackling batter of the deepest gold. Some haddy. Samadhi. Loads of salt’n vinny, please and a pair of tickled bunions.
But Tranquillity is a state denied me.
Marco’s Emporium is shut.
Bastard’n Monday!
40
THEY’D ARRIVED IN the library’s IN section – Rhona Carlyle and yon right wee horror Sneery Clearie, her with the waxy eyelids and smell of dog bum on’r breath.
Clay dumped the Biggles book, then with all the nonchalance of a one-legged ostrich, he strolled across to the non-fiction area. His heart, a scunnersomely stupid bag of tricks, having decided that he was playing for Scotland and was about to burst the net with a twenty-yarder, turned on all of its taps full bung.
The girls spotted him – it would’ve been hard not to’ve seen the watchman’s brazier glowing so brightly there in the corner. As they approached, Clay grabbed at a bulky book which, because of its unexpected weight, immediately slipped through his sweaty fingers. It plunged to the floor with a bang that might’ve been heard as far away as Tradeston, and surely must startle ‘Foxy’ from his lair. The red-haired fiend seemed to believe that the ears of boys had been provided for him to steer with, rather than for them to hear with: Clay’s right appendage began to throb as if in anticipation of the caretaker’s pincering grip. Clay saw himself being tugged along in an abject crouching manner, gathering speed as they approached the fateful PUSH-ONLY door through which, having surrendered your library ticket – the hangman’s tribute – you were dispatched to the limbo of a bookless universe.
As he bent to lift the book, his nose that’d warned him in a dream that one day it was going to commit suicide without waiting for the rest of his cowardly bits, began to drip. From his trouser pocket – how tight it’d become – he tugged a chunk of floral curtain rag, an action that dragged with it a cascade of jorries; they sped from him in all directions, lodging under tables, below chairs, in darkish corners, even his ‘Wizard’s Eye’, that uncrackable green demon, had fled, but he resisted the urge to pursue it.
Surely now Foxy could come. Clay imagined the caretaker’s forbidding door being suddenly whipped open to reveal the terrifying man who’d obviously been disturbed at his dinner for a go
re-freckled napkin was loosely tied about his neck and he clutched in his hand the remains of a child’s leg . . . Foxy, however, did not appear; it must be his day off.
The girls drew yet nearer.
Frantically, Clay riffled through his mental phrase-book, trying to pluck from it some passable remark. The weather? Was it still raining? No, it was foggy. When the moment came he stuttered out something totally idiotic: ‘Hullo, is it still f-fogging?’
‘Still f-fogging what?’ asked Sneery Clearie.
Rhona Carlyle’s pale hand rose to glide through the sleek plum darkness of her hair then she turned her head away, probably to hide a grin.
‘What’s the book?’ Sneery now asked.
‘Just a book.’
‘An awfy big book.’
‘Aye.’
‘What’s it aboot?’
‘Things,’ said Clay desperately.
‘Let’s see, then.’ Sneery wrested the book from his grasp then began to flap through its pages. ‘Aye,’ she nodded as she showed one of the book’s illustrations to Rhona Carlyle, ‘things awright – UNDER-things!’
It turned out that the book was A History of the Female Costume Through the Ages!
‘You thinking of taking up dressmaking, Tommy?’ asked Sneery.
Clay blushed so hard it was a wonder that his suicidal nose hadn’t melted there and then and dropped off.
‘Tommy,’ said Sneery.
‘Whit?’
‘You’d better shut your mooth – somebody might post a letter in it!’
With feathery sniggers both lassies moved away.
‘I don’t remember any of that,’ Rhona said. ‘You’ve made it up.’
Swing Hammer Swing! Page 35
