Docherty

by William McIlvanney

  ‘Ah’m lookin’ fur a local lad wi’ a notion o’ the game,’ he said. He flashed his jacket open to show that he was wearing his professional pockets. This is a nicht that wis made fur poachin’, boays. Ah’ can smell the salmon. They’re lyin’ doon at Riccarton Water waitin’ tae surrrender. Noo Ah’ve a couple of vacancies. Wan oan the net an’ wan tae be steerer. Who’s it tae be?’

  The others laughed.

  ‘Who’ll pey the fines?’ Buff asked.

  ‘Ma lawyers attend tae a’ these wee things. Noo, come oan, boays. Don’t make a rush like this. Form an orderly queue. Buff, Ah’m sorry Ah hiv tae turn ye doon. Ye’re guid but ye’re auld, son. Tam Docherty. There’s ma man. The finest hundred-yards melodeon-player in Ayrshire. Tammas. Ah guarantee success. Riccarton’s yer oyster. I will make youse fishers of fish.’

  Since Tam’s mood was unemployed, and since this was a night for picking out the lining of your pockets, he felt interested in any diversion. He let Dougie banter him into the idea of a poaching expedition. Gibby, who had been wilting with boredom for more than an hour, suddenly bloomed with enthusiasm, and insisted on offering his services. Conscious of the danger involved in using somebody subject to such unpredictable fits of not unobtrusive violence, Dougie was doubtful. He only agreed after making clear the special terms of Gibby’s contract.

  ‘Nae brainstorms,’ he cautioned, as if they were a hazard as avoidable as taking matches down the pit. ‘An’ if we pass ony shithoose doors, fur any favour shut yer een. In case ye get the notion.’

  Gibby nodded soberly, guaranteeing sanity at all times. Now that the outing was fully manned, there was an atmosphere of expectancy as they waited for darkness. Gibby especially was impatient. He had suggested that he should go up and let his mother know, in case she worried. But when Dougie replied that she might not let him out to play again, Gibby abandoned the idea sheepishly. Dougie had the net and a couple of rough towels in the special pockets that were sewn inside the jacket, so that there was no need for anybody to bring more gear. Even Buff caught the fever. While they waited, he recounted a long, involved story about how he had been taught the art of guddling salmon. He looked a little forlorn, mulling his memories, when they left him in the gloaming to walk down through the town.

  As Tam went with them, the night that was coming seemed to mute the hardness of the town with an influence like a woman’s, draped a corner with shadow, made a back lane pungent with the breath of trees. Blowsy with summer, scented with a thousand subtle mysteries, it seduced him from his loneliness and made him feel right simply to be walking towards the dark. The smells he moved among were like an aerial language, incomprehensible to him yet instinct with memory as if, could he decipher them, they would tell him who he was. He let their soundless babble break over him, feeling quicken far within him vague sensations, half-thoughts.

  He remembered the summers of boyhood, not as a continuity, a part of his own history, but in one small instant ecstasy of pain, as if a bubble of blood were bursting in his heart. Borne on the air, it seemed, like dragonflies, as faint, as glimpsed, as fleet, came his regrets for what he had been, was, would never be. But they were gentle with him, as if to acknowledge them was partly to atone. Irrelevantly, the three of them walking brought back to him another night, and miners walking. He had been only a boy, ten, twelve years old, but he was there among them – miners, thousands his memory made them, walking through the darkness towards a hill. They held a meeting.

  That memory still held him, when they emerged from the town along the river’s edge. The darkness was waiting for them like a friend. Having made the night’s acquaintance at moments in his journey through the town, Tam was still unprepared for the immediacy of its full embrace, the ripeness of its breath, the sweetness of the grass. The focus of sounds shifted, whispers magnified. The river, gagged by the town, survived its interruption to resume myriad tonal changes, like the articulation of infinity. Along the sound they walked in single file, Dougie in the lead, interpreting for them scutters in the grass, a baffle of movement somewhere in the dark.

  Dougie was in no hurry to begin. He walked them long and when he found a place (a comfortably grassed chaise longue between two trees that was invisible till flattened, so that his skill had seemed to invent it), he sat down and took out his cigarettes. They smoked and talked, their voices moling gently back and forward in the darkness. It was good to listen to Dougie. He talked about poaching, stories of legendary whippets, wayward ferrets, night fishings when the catches had been Galilean. More than the anecdotes themselves Tam enjoyed the idiom in which they were expressed. Apart from the creativeness of his memory, Dougie made liberal use of expressions like ‘It was that quiet ye could hear the snails breathin’,’ and ‘The waiter wis oily, throwin’ the sun like arra’s in yer e’en.’ He was savouring the prelude to action, content to initiate them slowly into his joy in what he was doing. He didn’t lech after the salmon; he loved them truly.

  The first part of the ceremony over, the baptism followed. They undressed quietly, sloughing three heaps of clothes among the trees. Phosphorescent with pallor, their bodies separated, flickering like tapers through the leaves. Tam and Dougie moved down river, Gibby in the opposite direction. The uncertainty of the surface they were crossing dehumanised their progress, feet raised and lowered jaggily, arms wavering for balance, so that they seemed like three enormous birds which had never fledged. Tam felt the coldness of the night film on his body like frost.

  The method was simple. Taking an end of the net each, Tam and Dougie insinuated themselves into the water, which compressed the muscles of legs, torso, and arms in turn, like a torture box, until the coldness located the genitals and clenched there like a bulldog. Then they teased the net into a gentle curve behind them and started to swim very smoothly upstream, towards where Gibby should be. A strangled gasp located him. The noise didn’t matter, since his function was to cause enough disturbance to drive the fish towards them. He performed well above and beyond the call of duty. The water boiled above them and among the threshings, his curses and agonised pleadings played like flying fish. The impression was of a man acting in self-defence. Tam and Dougie felt small impacts take place within the steady pull of the river, like pulse-beats being missed. Slowly they swam the ends of the net together and hauled it out.

  It was all done twice, with an interval for Gibby to offer up prayers of intercession to the god of poaching for the preservation of his manhood. They caught eleven good salmon and six or seven miscellaneous midgets, which Gibby wouldn’t allow them to throw back, saying he had a client for them.

  Buffing his body back to warmth under the towel, Tam experienced a profounder feeling of accomplishment than he had known for a long time. When they were dressed and walking back along the river with their catch, he watched Dougie, a cigarette in his mouth, the smoke drifting round his nostrils like incense in the stillness of the night. His face reminded Tam of the way his father’s used to look when the family was returning from the Mass. Tam felt envious of the relationship Dougie had established with his life. With the chaos around him he had made his separate peace. Tam was wondering if he could do the same. The well-being he felt at the moment seemed like a promise.

  Under the Riccarton bridge, Dougie cached eight of the salmon in a hole beside the river, to be taken to the back-door of the fish-shop in the morning. That gave them one each for the house, and Gibby still had what Dougie called ‘the meenies’.

  ‘Whit the hell d’ye want wi’ them?’ Dougie asked as they came through the backstreets.

  ‘They’re fur ma boss, see.’

  ‘Are ye aff yer heid? They widny make a breakfast fur a bumbee.’

  ‘They’re no’ fur eatin’. Mair a sorta food fur thocht. Ah’m goin’ up this wey.’

  Gibby made a strange, internal noise of merriment, laughter in the dark caves of his cunning. They had halted on a corner.

  ‘Ye ken hoo holy auld Devlin is?’ The other two nodde
d. The factory-owner’s nickname was Jehovah. ‘When he peys the wages, he always has a wee service. Hymns an’ prayers. An’ by the look o’ the wages Ah think he chairges us fur them. Always talkin’ aboot “The Plan”. Everythin’ that happens has a purpose. Well, let ‘im work this yin oot. Hauf a dozen fish lying’ oan his porch at eicht in the mornin’.’ Walking away from them, Gibby had started to cackle. He shouted back, ‘If he disny stert buildin’ an ark in the back-door, it’s no’ ma faut.’ He bellowed, ‘Salmon! Fresh Salmon!’ twice, and merged with the shadows.

  ‘The bastard’s daft,’ Dougie said, not without reverence, and they walked on.

  Coming in, Tam had the momentary sensation of having been away for a long time and yet felt the room fit around him like familiar clothes. After a couple of hours spent with the width of the darkness breaking across him like an ocean, the house seemed more minute than ever. Yet in some strange way this room was bigger than the night, absorbed it into itself until the excitement of the darkness disappeared.

  Instantly, what they had been doing was in perspective. The vague notion Tam had had to take up the poaching seriously, to cultivate the pleasure he took in it, dissipated. He felt a little guilty, as if he had been a boy playing truant. He didn’t want to be like Dougie. Poaching was a nice enough way to pass the time. But being a man wasn’t a hobby. That was what they would like you to do: work your shift and take up pigeons, or greyhounds, or poaching, and hand your balls in at the pay-desk.

  He looked round the room, grateful for its pokiness, its poverty. It was a place that couldn’t help being honest about who he was. In the glow from the fire the moleskins shone. He listened. Every breath drawn in this house made him bigger, both told him who he was and put demands on him. He heard Conn sigh in his sleep and wanted to see him grow up overnight. What would he be? An office worker? A teacher even? He listened to Jenny’s breathing, steady, peaceful – the pulse of his family. How in the name of God did she manage? His wonder was confused with her voice and her laughter and images of her body in bed. He felt an enormous upsurge of identity, and grew aggressive on it. He almost wished he could fight somebody now on their behalf.

  Instead, he laughed to himself and started to make a cup of tea. The salmon lolled in the pail of water near the fireplace. There would be some for Buff and Aggie too. As he moved about, taking off his boots and jacket, buttering a piece, masking the tea, he was all the time making small superfluous noises. ‘Aye’, ‘Ah weel’, ‘Uh-huh’. It was a dialogue with his own contentment. In a few hours he would be back in the pit and tomorrow night he would come home like a dead man, having paid for his loss of sleep. But for the moment time was under control, his servant. As he champed his bread and scalded his mouth luxuriously with great slurps of tea, he was startled by a noise outside, and then recognised Gibby’s gentle, chuckling laughter. The sound seemed somehow lovely in the stillness, was like a rose blooming between the cobblestones of the street. And Gibby’s amusement pollenated Tam’s own little moment, until he found himself rocking with suppressed laughter, shaking his head, a soggy mass of bread held precariously in his mouth.

  ‘Tam?’ Sleep made the word an almost indecipherable wedge of sound.

  The pressure of Tam’s pent-up good humour siphoned itself off into a smile. He had someone to share it with.

  ‘It’s King Edward, Mrs Docherty. Ah jist drapped in fur a cup o’ tea. The fire’s oot in the palace.’

  She stirred against an undertow of sleep, trying to ask about where he had been. The sensuous slowness of her movements brushed like silk against his senses. ‘Ah’m no’ sure,’ he said to her half-formed question. ‘But Ah ken where Ah’m goin’.’ He rinsed his mouth out with the last of the tea and hissed the dregs on to the banked fire.

  In bed he had a moment of doubt. She must be tired. But the gossamer hair of her arm breathing against his naked body blessed his urge, absolving him from choice. He won her slowly and gently from sleep, led her up out of the recesses of whatever dream had held her, to meet him. The covers tented above them, encased him with her coilings and the lush sweetness of her sweat. Only once she stinted, whispering, ‘We’ll waken the wean.’ The words were a ridiculous irrelevance, like a naked woman trying on a mutch, and he almost laughed. He brought her to fusion and lay back quickly, muttering, ‘Ah’m sorry, son,’ to his spilled sperm, ‘but we hivny the room.’

  Out of the darkness, complete, as if it had been waiting for him there, came what he had remembered earlier tonight -miners walking in their droves towards a hill. He had been sleeping the night with his uncle, Auld Spooly. To keep him company, for Spooly was a bachelor. And Spooly had taken him with him on the march. Just about every pit in Ayrshire went spontaneously on strike. They marched to Craigie Hill and held a meeting.

  What he remembered was the sheer awe of looking at their numbers. They had seemed to him enough to do whatever it was they wanted. They still were. The thought of it struck him with the force of a conversion as if he had just realised that he had once been present at a miracle. The void he had created earlier tonight talking to his father filled suddenly, wondrously, with men. He seemed to see again the opaque bulk of their bodies, massing like a storm cloud round the crest of Craigie Hill, to hear again the rumble of their voices, like frustrated thunder, to catch again the name that passed among their tight mouths like a password: Hardie. Keir Hardie. The name fell upon his mind now like a benediction. Keir Hardie knew the truth and was down there, telling it to the big ones. There was hope. Tomorrow he would go in among whatever was waiting, water, slag, bad props, and fetch his coal. And Keir Hardie would do his talking for him.

  With the satisfaction of a man who has established the terms of his employment, he turned over on his side to go to sleep.

  ‘Aye, Jenny,’ he said, thinking of a detail overlooked. ‘Conn goes through wi’ the ither boys the morra.’

  And the firelight caught his smile and showed it to nobody.

  6

  Just by his moving out of the box-bed beside his parents’ to the same room as Mick and Angus, Conn’s life entered a new phase. The change involved no more than a few yards but in Conn’s private geography he had crossed a frontier.

  The strangeness of things fed his sense of exploratory excitement. The very darkness of the room was different. When he lay in it, there was no fire, no gaslight burning. For a couple of hours or so every night, he was alone in it with the voices of the others reduced to a background music, and in his house solitude was a luxury. At these times he ruled the room, his whimsy was law. His bed was ship, plateau, stockade; storms blew up out of the corner by the window; Captain Morgan boomed in whispers; the packs of wolves ran round the walls; and an enemy was beaten until exhaustion reduced him to a pillow.

  Night after night his fantasy made a weird ante-room to the reality in which his family moved beyond the wall. Coming in to check on him, his mother would often find him lying on top of the covers, his body buckled awkwardly as if he had fallen from a height, an Icarus whose wings had melted into the mundanity of rumpled bedclothes, drab walls.

  But most exciting of all were the times when he managed to stay awake until Mick and Angus came to bed. He shared a bed with Angus while Mick lay across from them in the isolation to which his rank entitled him. The talks they used to have affected him like a fever. Mostly he didn’t really listen to their words, he simply absorbed them like microbes, until they induced in him delusions of manhood.

  Mick liked to talk about places he had heard of and would like to go to. The names unfurled like bright colours in the darkness. His gentle voice, self-absorbed as a prayer, put into Conn’s mind garish maps of impossible places. Mexico, he said. And Canada. The outback. Bush. Crocodiles that were mistaken for logs. Cannibals. Spittle that was ice before it hit the ground. (If you cried, would your eyes freeze?) Dancing snakes. Conn shuddered ecstatically.

  Angus was more immediate. He talked most about himself. His favourite subject was the boys h
e had fought, closely followed by the ones he would fight. He had always seemed to be physically in advance of his age, and already he gave the impression of a man’s strength compressed into a boy’s body. Conn, much slighter, jocularly called ‘the shakings o’ the poke’ by his father, listened to Angus with awe, admired him extravagantly, and surreptitiously tested his own biceps below the bedclothes.

  Occasionally, Conn would say something himself. But he so often unintentionally evoked laughter, kindly from Mick, rather hooting from Angus, that he found protection in silence. The transmission of each one’s secrets to the darkness, the process of almost mystically hallucinating the future – these were part of a complicated rite, in which he was only a novitiate. Letting the other two act as a filter to his own confused experience, he found a temporary perspective through their eyes. They gave more definite shape to his growing pantheon of fears and doubts and hopes. With their attitudes pontificating and his own experience giving tentative responses, there started up in him a dialogue between himself and the circumstances around him. He began, quite simply, to become himself. By trying on his brothers’ attitudes he was beginning to measure himself.

  At first, he was content to masquerade as them. He accepted Angus’s measurement of his father just as somebody who was tougher than anybody else, who could ‘easy win’ any other man in High Street – which pretty well made him unofficial champion of the world. Conn enjoyed carrying that knowledge around with him like a secret weapon which could get him out of any crisis.

  He faithfully filed away Mick’s description of old Miss Gilfillan across the street as ‘a right lady’. It didn’t help much, since he wasn’t clear about what a lady was, and watching Miss Gilfillan like a detective didn’t clarify things. She remained a grey mystery in the funny way she walked, as if she was on wheels, her lips, which seemed to be sewn together (if you looked very close, you could see the little lines the stitching made), the special look she always gave him no matter how many other children were there, as if they had a secret. (Once she had given him a penny, coming out of her house just to do that. He had played outside quite a lot after that, but she never did it again.) Still, he kept those two things, side by side, Miss Gilfillan and ‘lady’, like someone memorising a dictionary meaning he doesn’t understand. Knowledge is knowledge.