A Small Death in the Great Glen

by A. D. Scott

  McAllister laughed. “There’s not many would think ‘Glasgow’ and ‘civilized’ fitted into the same sentence. No, I came to see my mother for the anniversary.”

  “Oh. Aye. Must still be painful for her. You don’t get over an accident like that. Burying a child—it’s no right.”

  It was no accident, he didn’t say; they, his friends, his colleagues, thought him obsessed. The memory hanging, they all stared into their glasses for an awkward second.

  Willie Graham, the shorter and rounder of the two journalists, glanced at the big wall clock.

  “Time for a half-pint, then we must be getting back.” He signaled the order. “See you’ve a wee bit of bother up your way. The Polish man must be feart for his safety in the local gaol.”

  “It’s certainly a shock in a small town where everybody knows everything.”

  “No like here, then. You’d be hard-put to run all the bad stories in this place.”

  “The gangs still about, then?”

  “In control, more like.”

  A clock’s chime cut through the buzz of the bar. They downed the dregs of their drinks, held out a farewell hand, then hurried back to the late shift on the news desk, John McAllister’s former life.

  He had returned to the tenement soon after closing time, a couple more beers and whiskies closer to the wind. Opening the door to the front room, a small lamp of the religious variety lit up the family shrine. He picked up the solitary photo of himself on the china cabinet; thirteen he was, in his brand-new school uniform that had cost his father three months of overtime. A wedding picture of a strangely solemn bride and groom and a formal photo of a group of firemen, indistinguishable in their uniforms, were to left and right. He put on the main light, too tired to sleep. He picked up a photo with his father and friends smiling out through the years. A good man, so everyone said, and McAllister agreed, “… the best.” He put the picture back.

  The mantelpiece and piano top were reserved as memorials to his brother. At least twelve pictures of Kenneth stood in polished silver frames: a skinny wee boy in baggy shorts with oversize gloves dangling on the ends of sticklike arms; with different opponents facing off against each other; with a group shot of equally skinny boys in the ring; with all the club members on the annual ferry trip down the Clyde. He picked that one up. Kenneth was wild with excitement; it was that obvious even in a group of thirty or so boys. There was something about one of the other boys, one of the ones leaning over the ship’s railings smiling down at the photographer, that made him stop. … No, couldn’t be, it was just that Scottish, cheeky, eye-squinting grin and freckles that made you certain his hair was carrot red; the kind of a face that made him seem familiar. Possibly.

  The photos of his brother had all been taken at the club, costing sixpence for the group shots, a shilling for individual ones—not expensive. His mother had never missed a year. Then dead at fifteen, verdict suicide. But his mother was right, it was never suicide. And the church had agreed, so she got her funeral. He may have killed himself, wee brother of mine, but something, someone, had pushed him into drowning himself in the river. McAllister believed that then and still believed it now. Interfered with—a ridiculous idiom to his writer’s way of thinking. Kenneth may have been spared that, but mentally?

  Over a breakfast of tea and a cigarette he chatted to his mother of his new life. Whether she heeded or not didn’t matter; he felt the need to fill the vacuum of a house empty of hope. He told her of his first six months, of the town itself, of the people and the newspaper. Then he ran out of steam.

  “Can I borrow one of the pictures from the boxing club?”

  “As long as you bring it back.”

  It broke his heart that she hadn’t even the energy to ask why.

  “I’m away now to the Herald. Can I get you anything whilst I’m out?”

  His coat already on, picture in his pocket, hat in his hand, he turned, hesitated.

  “Something happened in the Highlands. It reminded me of what happened—”

  “He fell. He drowned. Nothing more happened, John. That’s the end of it.” Her voice, harsh as a seagull’s squawk, left no angle for argument. “I don’t need you harping on again with your wild theories. You’ve more imagination than sense, I’ve always said.”

  He patted her shoulder. They were not people who touched.

  “Would you like some fish for tea? I’ll be down that end of the town. I’ll call in to Tommy McPhee under the bridge. You always said he has the best fish.”

  “If you like.”

  “Anything else? Maybe some stout?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I know, Ma. I know you’re fine.”

  He gently squeezed her arm; it felt like the carcass of a scrawny hen. He walked out into the city morning, a time of day he had seldom seen when a reporter on the late shift, and, rounding the corner into a cold easterly, his eyes were watering. He blamed it on the wind.

  McAllister needed a favor. Sandy heard him out.

  “It’s still about Kenneth, is it?”

  “It’s always about Kenneth.” McAllister was grim. “But something I came across, I’d like to check. Probably nothing. Most likely me off with a bee in ma bunnet—again.”

  The Herald never changed; the news desk, the subeditor’s desk, the copyboys lurking behind anything that they could lurk behind. It had been a year but many there hadn’t noticed, presuming that McAllister had just returned from a long lunch. Sandy Marshall had kept in touch. A talented reporter, like many before him he had made his name as a journalist only to be kicked upstairs to become a frustrated editor.

  “So no hope that you’ve come here to rescue me from all this shite?” Sandy gestured to the pile of papers colonizing his desk.

  “I’m here to see my mother. The anniversary again.” He was going to say that he was here to support her, maybe be of some comfort, but he had no idea if his arrival made any difference at all.

  Sandy focused on the previous “probably nothing.” He’d had experience of McAllister’s understatements. Cadets together, both bright working-class boys, they were escaping the destiny of going down the pits of Clackmannanshire, for Sandy; following his father into the fire brigade, for McAllister.

  “Here’s a pass for the archives.” He scribbled a signature. “Any developments on the child’s murder?”

  “Not yet, but the story is yours when I have it.”

  “The usual place in Buchanan Street thenight?”

  “Aye. But I’ve got to get back north soon. A newspaper to run.”

  “Is that what you call it? The classies still on the front page, are they?”

  The search in the archives was tedious. He had read, almost memorized, the articles—brief mentions really, often. But now he thought he had a new tack. The date, and more important the place, was on the back of the photograph in his mother’s even writing. He eventually found the file. There were far more references than he could ever have imagined. It took all morning, and after reading and trying to make sense of what he had found, McAllister needed air, needed to walk and to smoke.

  Out in the streets and lanes and backcourts of the city, he wandered without any particular direction. In between needle-sharp showers, heavenly searchlights of sun highlighting turrets and gargoyles and statues and ironwork, then returning to rain before anyone got their hopes up, he walked, thinking, not looking.

  He stopped at the fish shop under the bridge, then the fruit barrow. The tingling in his feet, like the sensation of defrosting after a walk in the snow, came from the underground railway vibrating the pavements and cobblestones. The air too was vibrating from the constant stream of trams and buses and overhead trains grumbling as they left the station, and civilization, bound for the wilderness beyond. Tollcross, Glasgow Green, the Clyde, legends and stories and songs mapped every part of the city. Or so McAllister fancied. He passed Barrowlands dance hall; he never noticed the squelch underfoot as he crossed the sodden turf of Gl
asgow Green. The route that he was walking, his private Via Dolorosa, hadn’t registered. He was stopped. The gunmetal-gray river, flowing endlessly, barred the way. His internal compass had brought him to within a few yards of the infamous footbridge.

  By daylight the bridge was busy with old men, bairns on bikes, mothers with prams laden with washing, shopping and babies. By night, the elegant suspension affair, the demarcation line between the Billy Boys and the Fenians living across the Clyde, had seen more skirmishes than Londonderry. He walked to the dead center of the bridge and stared unseeing down to the water below. A brass plaque, he thought, that’s what’s needed, a memorial to the mostly young men, his brother included, who had died between the cables of this Glasgow landmark. He turned and walked swiftly back the way he had come.

  If I was writing this up, he told himself, I’d put “He fled the scene.”

  His weak attempt at humor didn’t help, so he made for the nearest public house.

  That same night, in the same pub as the night before, a neutral pub, no allegiances, round the corner from the Athenaeum, with an odd mix of students, workingfolk and that lost tribe of Glasgow, Partick Thistle supporters, and, for reasons no one could explain, folk from Kilmarnock, gathering together, drinking together, singing together in this oasis of alcohol, a Glasgow bar. There’s none like it, McAllister remembered. Settling into a table under the window, McAllister and Sandy Marshall supped companionably with not much said.

  “Another?”

  McAllister stood to get in his round when the doors swung open, letting in a gust of wind and rain and an imposing figure in black. At the sight of him, a memory, the same memory buried deep in the collective unconsciousness of all Catholic boys, made McAllister shudder.

  “Over here,” Sandy called out.

  Leaving a much-mildewed golf umbrella by the door, the man joined them. He requested a Guinness. McAllister looked furtively at the newcomer in the bar mirrors. The next Great White Hope with a good resemblance to Spencer Tracy, was McAllister’s first impression. He waited a while for the Guinness and his heartbeat to settle, then, balancing three glasses, returned to the table.

  “Michael Kelly. You must be John McAllister.” The priest stood, holding out a massive ham of a hand.

  McAllister returned the handshake.

  “Sandy has told me some of your story. I’m deeply sorry about your brother.”

  “It’s been eight years, nearly nine.”

  “But it doesn’t go away.”

  “No. It doesn’t.” A strong pull on his beer, then McAllister laid the photograph on the table. “I’d like to ask you about this.”

  “The Boys’ Boxing Club.” He turned the picture over. “But this picture was before my time. The club closed. But we reopened. There is a huge interest in boxing ever since a Scot won the Lonsdale belt.” Father Kelly kept staring at the group photograph as though searching for something or someone. “No, I can’t place this picture. But I think I recognize one of the boys. If you’d like to visit—” He laughed at McAllister’s expression. “No, no strings. Sandy told me you’ve forsaken the faith.”

  “Aye, lost it somewhere between the Gorbals and Guernica.”

  “But this fella here”—Father Kelly placed his finger below a skinny larva-white boy in boxing shorts pulled right up to his oxters—“if it’s the same person, he volunteers at the club, I’ll introduce you.”

  Five o’clock in the afternoon, almost dark, McAllister again made his way to the river, then across St. Andrew’s bridge to the club that was a recurring setting in his recurring dreams. As he opened the door the smell brought the nightmare from sleep to awake; plimsolls, socks, disinfectant, sweat, terror. The bilious institutional green of the walls was the exact color of fear. And the never-changing noise: grunts, moans, shouts, commands, shuffle-shuffle of feet, tick-tock, tick-tock of a big boy in the corner with a skipping rope, the repetitive pounding on the punching bags, the oomph of a man on the huge medicine bag swaying from the ceiling, the sound for all the world as real as a blow to the belly. And every sound was distinctly Glaswegian.

  “Mr. McAllister, is it?”

  A short man with mouse-brown hair in a lavatory-brush haircut, narrow eyes and a narrow mouth, stepped forward. His grin expiated his looks, making anyone in range of his searchlight smile feel that they were interesting to know.

  “I’m Joe Brodie. Michael Kelly told me to expect you.”

  McAllister noted that he didn’t use the honorific “Father.”

  “I knew your wee brother Kenneth.”

  Straight to the point; McAllister liked that.

  “I’m happy to talk about him with you, all you want.”

  On the train journey back to the Highlands, he thought over his visit home and laughed at himself. In the eight years of his quest—the matter of the Gorbals Boys’ Boxing Club—he’d found, like any true Scotsman, the key to it in a bar. And no, he hadn’t been mistaken; it was Jimmy McPhee in the photo with his brother. As for the elusive object of his obsession—he wouldn’t give him the dignity of a title—he was no further toward finding his whereabouts.

  “No idea what happened to him,” Joe Brodie had said. “All I remember was that he was here one minute and gone the next.” Aye, Joe had replied to McAllister’s question, Father Bain knew Kenneth. “Kenneth was aye his favorite. But there was no harm in the man—not like some.” He continued: “He was a dab hand at the photography, he was the one who took all the pictures”—he gestured to the hundreds of framed photographs lining the walls—“probably took this one an’ all,” he said, handing the photo back to McAllister.

  “Gone,” was all Michael Kelly could tell him. “I don’t know where.”

  The train sped northward, snuffling and snorting through the empty snow-speckled landscape, racing the rivers and burns and waterfalls and rapids of gurgling whisky-peat foam that ran alongside the tracks, making their way to distilleries downstream. Remnants of ancient pine forest appeared and disappeared as the train chuffed joyously through the dramatic backdrop.

  They stopped at the edge of the high plateau to uncouple the dining and sleeper cars and to water the two steam engines needed for the descent to the sea. Once through the Drumochter Pass, a distant Ben Wyvis flaunted a covering of pink snow that changed to blue as the dark navy of evening crept upward from the firth below. The earthly stars of villages scattered along the shoreline were soon being reflected in the clear northern sky. Home? thought McAllister. Aye, maybe. He smiled to himself.

  It was hard to resist the warm lights of the Station Hotel as he alighted into a blast of icy air. Fellow passengers had scattered into the dark, but McAllister hurried for the bar. He’d never liked drinking nor eating on a train; too afraid of being trapped with someone who recognized him, just wanting “a wee word,” usually a libelous wee word. There were not a few in the town who felt it their duty to tell him what to write and how to run the newspaper. No anonymity in a small town.

  He settled in a quiet corner behind a pillar, having decided on a pint of the best before going to the dining room for supper. Turned to the sports pages of the Aberdeen daily—“Only thing worth reading in thon rag” was Don’s comment on the rival paper—he settled down to peruse the results of the tribal warfare that was the Highland Football League. Figures came and went, footsteps hushed by the thick carpet; midweek, but the bar was busy. The lonely and the anxious from the outposts of the county came for the sheriff’s court or to the county council or to check on their looming coronary or some such in one of the two hospitals that served the far reaches of the shire. Commercial travelers from the south, lodging in a bed-and-breakfast that shut the doors by nine o’clock, came for a drink and company. Those waiting for the sleeper to Edinburgh, furtive lovers or wheelers and dealers buttering up their local government representatives, all were here, all used the Station Hotel, for this was the place where the respectable folk of the Highlands met. McAllister—he came for the wide selection of si
ngle-malts, the food, the quiet and the short walk home.

  “John McAllister. What can I get you?”

  He looked up, distaste a momentary flicker across his face.

  “I’m fine, Mr. Grieg. Fine. Just off. Still got things to see to.”

  “Just a quick word.”

  Little deflects a bully, certainly not subtlety. The town clerk proceeded to lecture McAllister for a good fifteen minutes on what stories to run to “improve the paper,” all the while waiting to be asked to take a seat.

  “I really do have to go, Mr. Grieg.”

  Seeing his time was up, the town clerk went straight into his backstabbing best.

  “Donnie McLeod still with you I see. Aye. Used to be a good man. A right shame he’s so fond of the bottle.”

  He said this while clutching what must have been a double at least, McAllister noted. “As for his betting … some very unsavory characters in thon game. Not that it’s any business o’ mine, but I’m surprised you’ve kept him on.”

  McAllister said nothing, waiting for him to put the boot in, and Grieg was true to form.

  “He’s been poking about in town planning affairs, asking ridiculous questions. I’ve had to warn him. And stirring up those tinkers, poking his long neb into things that are private council business.”

  “But if it’s council business, how can it be private?”

  McAllister was deliberately mild, holding back an urge to head-butt the pompous plook of a man.

  “And my dear lady wife was most put out about that sneering wee piece on the Highland Ball. No call for that tone at all. I don’t know who wrote it, but I have my suspicions.”

  “I take full responsibility for all that appears in the Gazette.”

  “The council puts a lot of advertising revenue the Gazette’s way. It needn’t. There’s more than one paper in these parts.”

  McAllister, in his short time as editor, had come into contact with Grieg a few times and had always regarded him with amused contempt, as one of a type—a puffed-up popinjay who thought himself God’s gift (another of McAllister’s mother’s favorite phrases).