Swing Hammer Swing!

by Jeff Torrington

  ‘No, it’s kosher. In one of ma journals. Came across it the other day.’

  ‘That proves it, then.’

  ‘Proves what?’

  ‘A lot of baloney.’

  ‘If it was made up would I ridicule myself?’

  ‘One of your tricks to get sympathy. You blush? A stone would sneeze first.’

  ‘Good, that is. Instead of “bleed” you said . . .’

  ‘For a start, she was never called “Sneery”.’

  ‘Aye she was. Definitely.’

  ‘Mary or Merry – that’s all.’

  ‘Naw, naw. Mind when you lassies used to play ba’. There was this rhyme that went alang wae it: “One, two, three, alearie, I spied Wallace Beery sittin oan his bumbaleerie, kissin Shirley Temple.” Remember?’

  ‘Vaguely. But what’s that to do with . . .’

  ‘There was a variation that went . . .’

  ‘Don’t . . . they’ll think you’re drunk. Are you?’

  ‘Listen, it went . . . “I spied Sneery Clearie sitting oan her bumba . . .”’

  ‘Nothing of the kind.’

  ‘There was.’

  ‘Wasn’t.’

  ‘Was.’

  This was turning out to be one of our better visits. True, it’d begun in familiar style with some lip-sparring, nothing too heavy – feint’n jab stuff, is all. But even when she’d had’r customary go at me over financial shortcomings, sartorial sloppiness, tonsorial neglect, her spleen wasn’t really in it, the weight of the glove not there. We seemed a bit closer, somehow, linked by a sunny thread of levity, like in the tale where the dame springs her man from jail by using her bobbin – a right cock’n bull story, yon.

  Maybe what’d lightened the atmosphere had been Rhona’s decision to take my visit lying down instead of sitting amongst us flat bellies gawping in at the ‘Haunted fishtank’ or, as I heard a witty medic call it the other day – ‘The Electronic Drip-Feed’. Hooked into this apparatus you lie there supine while lulling image on image percolates through your thoughtstream until, after a time, you become so visually corrupted you’re incapable of differentiating between real life and the commercials, even of delineating the differences between Ho Chi Minh and Horace the Horse.

  Rhona, stretching towards me, lightly rapped her knuckle on my brow.

  ‘Hullo, anybody home?’

  I grinned and, perfectly naturally, as if we were lovers, took her hand in mine – and held it – in public for goshsakes!

  ‘Sorry. A thought just crossed my mind.’

  ‘And you’d to give the poor thing your arm’s that it?’

  Bedside banter. This was good, so very good.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘What thought?’

  ‘Can’t remember now.’

  ‘Course you can.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll maybe have another one soon.’

  ‘Another?’

  ‘Thought.’

  ‘Idiot!’

  And the handclasp going on, those interlaced fingers sustaining the moment beyond embarrassment to that inflowing intimacy of younger, more spontaneous times which proved beyond doubt how thoroughly the tactile sense is embedded in the nervescape of nostalgia; the fierce grieving for a lost smile, voice, or scent. Aye, this comes into it but what’s really heavy is the absence of touchability, that mood-flattener when you’re unable to simply reach out and stroke or caress a loved one. And what makes such grief even heavier is the haunting regret that you’d been so miserly in doling out the hugs when the chance was still around.

  The thought that’d made me link hands with Rhona was lost to me now – gone. Maybe just as well for it’d probably been rooted in malice and self-pity – a poor soil in which to cultivate roses. ‘Aye, but jist the stuff tae gar the thistles loup!’ as Hugh MacD. might’ve put it.

  When the end-of-visit bell finally rang I paid scant heed. In fact, for the first time since Rhona had been hospitalised I was the last flatbelly to leave the ward. I even turned and gave her a wave when I got to the door. I kid you not.

  41

  WE WERE DISCUSSING our schooldays, Vic Rudge and me, which gave’m a fine excuse for the airing of his expensive dental-repair work (expensive for the molar-howker, that is, for Rudge had probably extracted his cooperation on a ‘You-fix-my-mouth-cheap-or-I’ll-fix-your-mouth-expensive’ deal). Anyway, his mouth fairly winked and sparkled with gold conceits. But having rid itself of the decay and the caries that go along with fangblight, Vic the Viper still retained his gutter markings; the unsloughable skin of a slum upbringing testified to this as did the slangy glitter of his lingo. No way would he seek to have his cold banging speech delivery altered, for in the dark windings of the city which teemed with the defenceless prey he fed on, his voice was a key weapon. ‘What was yon PT teacher called, Tam? Mind, him that was podgering the tarts’ gym teacher. Eh? Chambers. Aye, you’re right – Torture Chambers. A right masochist, eh? Swaggering aboot wae yon leg bone – the humerus, I think they call it, though there was bugger all funny about getting rapped on the nut wae it. “Bone meets solid bone,” he used to say, mind? Then, if you were unlucky to cop the period afore the dinner break in his Black Museum; all they white blobby things floating aroon in jars, slices of fag-blitzed lungs, livers that’d been through the booze-grinder. See yon sheep’s heart he used to send round. Mind? – bobbing aboot in yon beaker. I can still smell the stink of yon reserving fluid. Aye, a right rotten lump of meat; it was the hairy stuff growing on it that gave me the boke. Wobble-wobble in the beaker and the bone-basher making you haud it right up to your face. Wobble-wobble. Put you right off your chuck. D’you hear about the day I stuck the thing doon yon kid’s neck? What was he called again? Cohen. Aye, Ice-cream Cohen. His auld man wanted me crucified in the playground.’ He sighed out some cigar smoke. ‘Aye, they were the days, eh?’

  Oh, aye, they were the days alright, Vic. You strutting around the playground like Mussolini, you’n yon pair, Warty Watson and Knuckles Macleod. ‘Pile-on’ was your favourite pastime, especially when you found yon Tommy Clay would squeal like a big Jessie just because his ribcage was threatening to splinter beneath the weight of twenty or so bodies. You’d go hunting for’m at playtime, you’n your pack of neanderthals; drag’m from his hidey-hole in the lavvy then haul’m out into the playground and invite half of the school to come’n lie on his screams. ‘We’ve got a lumpa Clay – Pile On!’ Aye, they were the days right enough, eh?

  In the pub a man babbling nonsense. His head bare as an orphan’s plate, the skull blue-badged by an old scar such as a hammer-blow might’ve left. ‘Nazi bastards!’ he roared at the barmen. ‘And sons of Nazi bastards!’ Giving the Nazi salute he goosestepped to the door which wafted him from sight.

  ‘Auld bugger’s bomb-happy,’ Rudge said. ‘Cargo’s loose.’

  He looked thoughtfully into his drinkless glass. I got the feeling he was loitering in the hope that I’d shove in another round. His stare rose to lock into mines. He shook his head. ‘Cannae get away wae it, Tam – you still stuck’n the Scabby. Fuck me, it’s like meeting your granny in Argyle Street twenty years efter you’ve buried’r. I mean chrissake, even auld pigeon’s’ve stopped gawn tae Scobie Street. You’ll be telling me next you’re still ripping the tables doon the Brandon.’

  On a high bracket a TV set dozed in a dream of cowboys and Colorado stone-scapes. Rudge was making me wait for his return round. ‘I mean,’ he went on, ‘nane of us was that bright at school. No expected to be – factory fodder, right? But you, Tam, if I mind right, you were a brainy wee shite, well, wae enough gumption tae get your arse aff the bin when it’s on fire. Must’ve been safter than I thought – hiding behind aw they books.

  ‘Stop that guy – he’s got a wean up his jook!’

  When Rudge’s unmistakable voice had boomed out in the Maternity corridor I had still found it hard to accept that it was really him. But there I’d been, exchanging a hypocritical handshake, mouthin how good it was to see�
�m again, and updating our respective biographies as we’d picked our way down snow-muffled streets to the boozer. Rudge’s wife, so he’d told me, had ‘dropped another foal’. The property market was his stamping ground these days. Renting pest-holes to skint newly-weds. Prosperous he looked with it, but still willing, I’d bet, to take the last tanner from a blind dosser.

  In the Scabby’s backcourt kingdom of rusting railings and midden pits, Vic’d been the undisputed monarch. Nature had rigged him out for leadership, equipping him with a formidable kit of bone’n muscle, not to mention a capacity for survival that outranked Methusela. Vic’s philosophy in life was grounded in the need to make his mark. People, he claimed, remembered a wound, bruise, or scar longer than they did a handshake. And in his book that was the prime requirement – to be remembered. His whole purpose for existing at all was to tattoo himself on other people’s memories; but to do this you had to get under their skins. And one by one they’d come for him with sleeves rolled up at the ready: gangfighters, schoolteachers, oinks, screws, and social workers, each of them itching to impose his or her authority on’m.

  Rudge’d leaned across the table to check out my face.

  ‘You had much in the booze-line the day?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing much. How?’

  He rose and crossed to the counter. Almost immediately one of the Maternity Mafia latched onto him, with whiskery smiles and trembly handshake he tried to work Rudge over. For his efforts he received an affable pat on the back and an earful of cigar smoke. Vic eventually returned with the drinks. ‘See they pensioners,’ he said, ‘cannae beat their patter. Great, so it is.’ He put the drinks on the table, a double whisky for him and for me –

  ‘What the fuck’s this?’ I wanted to know.

  He flicked some cigar ash from his seat with a hankie then sat down. That sinister event that was intended to be a smile happened to his face. ‘It’s a tomato juice, Tam,’ he said. ‘You must’ve seen one – even in the Dog. It still there, by the way?’

  Before I could blow my stack Rudge said, ‘I take it, Tam, since I once saw you driving a towel van or something, that you’ve got that daud of paper that allows you to snuff oot pensioners on the Queens Highway?’

  I nodded.

  ‘For somethin more up-to-date than a chariot, I hope.’ He smirked apologetically, ‘Forget I said that . . .’ Puff-puff went the cigar; sip-sip, his greedy lips. ‘I want you to dae’s a favour, Tam . . .’

  The favour was this: for two blue ones I was to drive Vic to a Casino – he felt lucky tonight – then I was to take his car home to Dumbreck and park it in his driveway: keys to be letterboxed. Apart from feeling lucky, Vic also had the inclination to get himself stinko, but was definitely not into blowing into the pig’s bladder. Since this was to be his last night on the ran-dan – his wife’d be coming home with the wean tomorrow – he wanted it to be special.

  You would’ve thought that I’d been plugged into the national grid so powerfully did vengeful lightning surge through my bones, shedding on Rudge, I’m sure of this for he clinched his eyes a little from the glare, the raw radiance of long-awaited retribution.

  ‘You’ve got to be fuck’n joking!’

  How I savoured every syllable of that refusal. The vehemence of it was for all the little Clays who’d been strewn behind me, those green-boned, half-toned versions of what I’d become, those snottery-nosed Thomases still back there nursing the hurts visited upon them by Victor the Visigoth. Fate, or whatever you want to call that croupier who shuffled Time with such dexterity, had at last skimmed across that bankrupting table of hers a card of astounding potency – a winner at last. But Rudge didn’t seem to think so; he upped the stakes.

  ‘Three quid, then,’ he said.

  Shrugging, working-class shoulders are good at making this wee gesture of resignation. From the Industrial Revolution onwards we kept getting better’n better at it. ‘You’ll work an eighteen-hour day, six days a week, and no slacking. Take it or leave it!’ (shrug-shrug); ‘Right, chaps, when I blow the whistle, up’n at the Hunnish swine. And remember, if you’re hit, try to fall face-down on the barbed wire to give the chap behind you a better foothold.’ (shrug-shrug): and one day, Thomas, you’ll do your chauffeur for the bullying bastard who, when you were a kid, walked all over you with his hobnailed boots! (shrug-shrug) . . .

  Rudge fell for it. ‘You’ll do it then?’

  A full-house of hatred as I banged my cards onto the table. ‘I’d rather have the pox and five mother-in-laws!’

  He laughed at that one – the famous Rudge laugh which was modelled on the chilling giggle of the gangster Richard Widmark’d played in The Kiss of Death alongside the reputed-to-be laziest actor in Hollywood (he’d have his stand-in chew his gum for’m), Victor Mature. After the movie’d been to the Planet, Vic could be heard practising the laugh, frightening weans and grannies with it in the putrid backcourts where he casually duffed up kids, or stoned dogs because it’d started to rain or something.

  When the manic giggle tapered off Vic lifted his whisky glass and gave his tonsils a good gargling with the spirits; the laugh, as if it’d been refuelled started up again only now there was more edge to it, more threat. A punter who’d been throwing nifty spears until then plonked one about a foot off the dartboard. Even members of the Maternity Mafia ceased their wheedling flattery and turned to glance uneasily in our direction. It was that kind of laugh, and Vic’d been working on it a long time, remember. Around his pulpy mouth some muscle-strips meant to aid the birth of smiles, tried, but failed to simulate an amused expression, but the eyes, those pitiless slum-grey eyes were saying: ‘Who the fuck’re you to turn me down? I’m Vic Rudge, remember? I wore out shoes kicking your arse up’n doon Scobie Street.’ His laughter ceased abruptly. He snapped: ‘Three and a half bar. What d’you say?’

  I said nothing.

  What began as a wheedling tone quickly passed to insult. ‘C’mon, Tam, I’m asking as a favour, for auld times’ sake. Remember the gang’s slogan? – “We’re the boys no one can stop – The Scobie Hatchet – chop! chop! chop!”? I mean seventy bob, for fucksake – you widnae make that playin the moothie at Glesca Cross.’ This was an obvious crack at my appearance. In other words – ‘You look like a bloody busker in that clobber, so don’t come the high’n mighty crap wae me!’

  His mouth flexed as if he was chomping down his rage. Another wee shot at the wheedling game. ‘You’d be doing me a right favour, Tam.’ He raised his glass and made a couping motion with it to his mouth. ‘A wee drap too much of the auld how’s-your-faither the day. Know what I mean, wett’n the wean’s heid and that?’ He shook his head. ‘Cannae be withoot wheels, Tam – no in ma game.’

  ‘Sorry Vic,’ I said and felt maliciously pleased with myself. ‘Got other plans.’

  His face seemed to snap down its few civil features and muscles, surfaced like so many steely components on a ship’s war deck, priming it for immediate hostile action. ‘Four pounds, then?’

  ‘Not interested.’

  ‘Fuck me, Tam – I could get a run in the Provost’s car for that.’

  ‘I’ll have to split,’ I said, pushing away my untouched tomato juice.

  As I rose he caught me by the sleeve, drawing me back onto my seat. ‘Awright, forget the Casino. Tell you what, run me ower to my sister’n law’s pad – off the Byres Road. I’ll give you the cab-fare back. What d’you say?’

  I demurred long enough to get his fingers tapping testily on the table. Might not be such a bad idea – a night on the Westend tiles. Ages since I’d been there. I could maybe drop by the Rubaiyat which used to be a favourite pub of mine. I looked across at Rudge then gave’m the nod.

  Right away he swung his drink over then smacked the drained glass on the table. ‘Right, let’s go.’ Vic was back in charge once more, the balance restored in his favour. He rose and from his wallet tugged out some banknotes. ‘See’s a bottle of laughing water, Tam – I’ve a phone call to make . . .’


  Before I’d the chance to touch my forelock he’d crossed the pub to the corner where the phone was being used by a punter in cap’n boiler-suit. One intimidating glare from Rudge and he cringingly surrendered the instrument.

  Meanwhile, I was striking back as best I could. ‘A bottle of your worst whisky,’ I said. ‘Make it real rot-gut stuff.’

  The barman came back with a smile on his coupon bearing a really fine malt whisky. ‘There y’are,’ he chirpily said, joining in the joke, ‘you canny get worse stuff than this – chew the arse out yer stomach so it will.’

  Vic was not chuffed with my driving.

  ‘For chrissake,’ he grumbled, ‘you’re no in your towel-van noo. Take it easy. Watch that bastard.’

  I punched the horn as a man weaved from the pavement into our path. The drunky, volleying curses, became a dwindling demon in my rear-view mirror. The car’s near-newness fazed me a wee bit, for Rudge in his forthright manner had assured me that I’d have a hinge in my windpipe if I so much as dented an ashtray during the journey. The car was a white Hillman Minx (this year’s model), black trim, and with a lean mileage count on its clock: it was obviously well thought of and well cared for. That was about it – there’d be no Sherman-like tour of the dashboard, no jaunty techno-jargon about the magical speed-aids it packed under its bonnet, not even a quick ref to how many secs it took to get from start-to-depart. Rudge was too busy for that kind of crap, too busy, that is, trying to save his pride’n joy from becoming the youngest car in the auto-dump.

  The passenger-driver is the worst kind of car sickness there is, about as welcome to a motorist as a raincloud was to Noah. The p/d is the most carping of critics, the Jiminy Cricket of the autoworld, a travelling vote of no-confidence. Sarcastic, too – very.

  ‘I think this bridge has the right of way!’

  But even worse than your verbal smartass is your chronic sigher. This gloomster makes evident from the first turn of the wheels his regret for having got himself entombed in your mobile crypt. As I could’ve remarked to Rudge, who combined grumbles, sarcasm, and sighs, not to mention blind panic, ‘There’s nae use greeting aboot the quality of the service after they’ve shut the fuck’n pyramid!’ Aye, he was stuck with me until breath did us part, and all the sighing in the world wasn’t going to help’m. I think, even as early on as George Square and its Christmas lights where Johnny Mathis was megaphoning his winterland drivel and we were sliding beneath – no, let’s be honest, we were juddering beneath – neoned foliage as I, with a regretted grind here’n there, was familiarising myself with the gearbox, I think even then he’d toyed with the idea of dumping me and taking his chances on a drunk-driving charge, either that or grabbing a cab and leaving the Minx as a chrissy present for the auto-vultures of which our city has a no mean amount. But the ejection of an unwilling party from your automobile might possibly be met with resistance of the noisy kind – just the goryless incident a festive oink might want to scribble up some space in his notebook, to give some substance to his flat-footing.