Be Near Me

by Andrew O'Hagan

  'Just ignore him, Father,' said Mrs Nolan. 'He's always in a bad mood when he knows he has to part with a shilling.'

  'I'm sure that's not the case,' I said.

  'Oh, it's true all right,' said Mr Nolan.

  'I'm sure you've heard all the great sayings about the Scots, Father Anderton,' said Mrs Nolan.

  'I simply ignore them,' I said.

  'Well, you shouldnae,' said Mr Nolan, 'because they're all deserved. I'm getting more tight-fisted by the week, is that not true, Denise?'

  She just laughed at the window and clouded it. She thought her husband and I were deep in conversation, but I saw her lift a finger and draw a heart on the cloudy window and then wipe it clean.

  'And I love a drink,' he said, disarmingly. He stared into the fairy lights around the edge of the car's interior. 'I can honestly say I like a good drink more than I like any of my children.'

  'Dominic!'

  'Well, it's a fact.'

  'Today of all days!'

  'Never mind,' he said. 'The Father doesn't mind a wee bit of the truth, do you, Father?'

  The hotel had tartan carpets and too many balloons. Each table in the reception suite carried several bottles of Frascati surrounded by net bags full of sugared almonds. Mr Nolan gave a speech saying he wasn't losing a daughter but gaining a son. The best man gave a speech saying the groom had lost his virginity round the back of a disco called Caspers, to a bus conductress twice his age. The groom's riposte included the observation that the best man was a 'bammer', whatever that is, along with the point that he first came to admire his new wife because she was a 'mentalist'.

  In my own, unscheduled speech, I tried to get into the swing of things by quoting Robert Louis Stevenson on the idea that marriage was a sort of friendship recognised by the police—titters into coffee cups—and then used scripture to argue that matrimony was a sacrament that deepened the couple's union with Christ—yawns—before raising one of the toxic glasses and taking my seat to cries of 'Ole, Ole, Olé.' A certain Auntie Mary was sick into a bag of wedding gifts. A certain Uncle Alan threw a punch in the direction of a certain Uncle Stuart, which missed but instead hit a curtain and cracked the panel of light switches behind it. Mrs Nolan complained to the hotel's function manager that the galia melon hadn't been cold. The bar ran out of ice just before the Guinness taps went down, but by then the band had appeared at the edge of the dance floor and the newlyweds were dancing to a song called 'Three Times a Lady'.

  'Enjoying yourself, Father?' said Mark.

  'I wouldn't go that far,' I said.

  'This party's great, man,' he said. 'Totally mad.'

  'Is that good?'

  He cuffed my shoulder with the knuckles of one hand.

  'It's cleared up out there,' he said. 'The rain's off. We were just outside. Have you seen the bogs in here? Right fancy. We bought these.'

  We were on the carpeted stairs next to a fire extinguisher, and people were pouring up from the downstairs bar. I remember looking at him and thinking how sharp he looked, his tie loose and the skin on his face so clear and fresh. He was showing me a handful of square packages: red-coloured condoms. 'Check them out,' he said. The stairs were cloying with the smell of aftershave and dry smoke. I reached my hand down behind me and felt the cold, soothing roundness of the fire extinguisher.

  'Are you trying to shock me, Mark?' I said.

  'Do you know what they are?'

  'No,' I said, 'but I have a suspicion they might be very evil indeed.'

  'McNuggets, stop ribbing him,' said Lisa, coming up from behind and leaning on both our shoulders.

  'They are ribbed,' said Mark, howling with laughter. 'That's what it says on here.'

  'Father, are you having a nice time?' asked Lisa. 'That was cool, what you did today. My sister's a bitch actually.'

  They both laughed.

  'Well, she is. But never mind. It was nice. Now I've got a room to myself, that's all I care about, so it is. And I keep the stereo.'

  'Excuse me, Lisa,' said Mark. 'If you don't mind, I've just been showing Father Anderton these rubber johnnies.'

  'Oh, yes,' I said. 'I was very shocked.'

  Lisa took a condom from him and pressed it into my hand. 'Now he's holding one!' she said. In that second I saw there was something a little vicious about Lisa; she didn't really care what happened in the world around her, so long as she found something to thrill her. 'I've got the key to their honeymoon suite,' she giggled.

  'Hey, motherfucker,' said Mark, 'stop telling everybody.'

  'We're going to put loads of johnnies all over their bedroom. Do you think that's a good idea, Father?'

  'Very good,' I said. 'Just don't tell the Bishop.' I dropped the thing onto the carpet and didn't look down.

  'Or the Pope!' said Mark.

  A group of boys came up holding pints. 'Check them out,' said Mark. 'Ties and everything. Totally fucked up.'

  The lagered boys seemed unsure what to do at a wedding. Each just stood around in his shiny black shoes. Their way of talking kept jolting me back to another time: they spoke like redneck Yankee soldiers from the 1960s or film mobsters, or was it black people they'd never met except on music videos? Two of the boys nodded to Mark, and he turned to me and lowered his voice. 'Don't go yet,' he said. 'See you out the front in half an hour.' One of the boys spoke into Mark's ear and then the whole group disappeared into the Gents.

  I went to the bar in the reception suite. I'd noticed there was a general apartheid at this sort of wedding: men drank at the bar while women sat with other women at the tables, passing cigarette lighters back and forth and occasionally squirting perfume on one another. The noise level seemed to grow and the night leaned backwards.

  'Look, Tommy,' said one of the men. 'There's your Jean. Holy Christ. They're all up for the Slosh.'

  'What's that?' I asked.

  'Your man here doesnae know the Slosh,' said a man with razor burns down his neck and a sodden tie.

  'It's a dance that women do at weddings,' said Mr Nolan. 'Don't worry yourself, it's a Scottish thing.' He looked up as he said this and a slight gleam of hostility showed in his eyes.

  'A Scottish country dance?' I said.

  They laughed.

  'Not really,' said a bald man with glasses. 'It's a west coast of Scotland thing. Or maybe an American thing. This side of the country is closer to America, Father. We've got their Trident missiles. We've got their air bases. We've got their telly programmes. And we've got their dances.'

  'It's no' American,' said Mr Nolan. 'It's a Scottish dance. It's a working-class kind of a thing.'

  'Oh, I see,' I said.

  'But I don't suppose you know very much about the working classes now, do you, Father?' he said.

  'I'm a product of the 1960s,' I said. 'We assumed we knew everything about the working classes.'

  'Aye, Father,' he said. 'But you don't know your authentic Scottish pro-le-tariat, do you?' He said this through half-gritted teeth.

  'Well, Mr Nolan. My life hasn't perhaps been as sheltered as you may think.'

  'Oh, "perhaps",' he said. 'Look, fellas. It's "perhaps". Perhaps his life hasn't been quite so sheltered. Hey, Mr Perhaps, maybe your life's not been so sheltered as we think.'

  One of the men handed me a glass of whisky and I put it to my lips and fed off the fumes for a second or two.

  'People like you,' said Mr Nolan, 'people that talk like you. Posh arseholes from England...'

  'Come on now, Dom, that's out of order,' said the man with the glasses. 'You don't talk to a priest like that.'

  'No,' said Mr Nolan quite calmly. 'It's just us talking in private here. Forget everybody else. You don't mind a wee heart-to-heart discussion, do you, Father?'

  'Carry on, by all means.'

  'By all means,' he said. 'Perhaps I will.'

  He took a long drink from his pint and looked up. 'Middle-class arseholes from England, pardon my French. You think Scotland is a playground for shootin' and fishin'. Yo
u think it's all fucken kilts and haggises and crap like that. You think it's folk songs and single malts and Hogmanay and the fucken Isle of Skye. Well, it's nothing like that. And it's no' hairy-arsed warriors wantin' to die for freedom either.'

  'Come on, Dominic,' said another man. 'It's no' half as bad.'

  'I'm no' sayin' it's bad,' he said. 'I'm sayin' their view ae it is bad. We've been listenin' tae it for hunners a years. They think we're a novelty act up here, just a bunch a people no' worthy ae the same kinna respect these people take for granted when it comes tae themselves.'

  'Well argued,' said the bald man, his eyes wide, his moustache soaking wet and his face seal-like in its beseeching dumbness.

  'Respect isn't a thing you just get,' I said, 'like free school milk. People earn respect by their actions. And sometimes by their words.'

  'And what, Mr Perhaps,' said Nolan, 'if yer actions are limited by yer circumstances? What if yer thoughts urnay really yer ane? What happens if the state is organised tae undermine yer language?'

  'That's paranoid,' I said. 'You've made a silk purse out of your grievances, Mr Nolan.'

  'Now we're talking,' said his friend. 'You people come up here and buy houses and land. Not you. It's no' you I'm talking aboot. You're just a priest. But people like you. English people. Or else people from fucked-up places who turn up here without as much as a working radio. They want the world.'

  'You're no' being very consistent, Dom,' said the friend. 'Either you don't like rich folk or you don't like poor folk. Make up your mind. Sounds to me like you just don't like anybody very much.'

  'Inverted snobbery,' I said.

  'I don't like people very much,' said Nolan. 'That's part of my charm. It's part of the national charm, is that not right, Father? You must have discovered that by now.'

  'Whatever you say, Mr Nolan. It's your day.'

  'That's right,' he said.

  'It's your daughter's day.'

  'Uh-huh.'

  'And it's your country.'

  'Ye better believe it.'

  Nolan drained his glass and gasped as if to recognise that the taste was refreshingly horrible. He stroked his chin, looking around at the others in the room with a softening contempt. One could have sworn Nolan felt sorry for people who had the misfortune not to be in his shoes. He played the part of the dyspeptic father, the cynical husband, but I'd bet you anything he enjoyed the spectacle of his life in that town, the constant drama of his dislikes, his role as a man coming down hard on strangers and phoniness, all the while, I suspect, more strange and more phoney to himself than he ever thought possible. Such men have pride in their roles, yet they also hate the way things have gone, forever conjuring former worlds in which individual performance ceded to the collective habits of the community. That world had disappeared. Nolan knew it had disappeared and he didn't seriously mourn it. He liked to cast a cold eye on the present, though he, in fact, was the present, the coldness beholding itself.

  'Our Lisa said you help her and her pals,' he said. 'Up at the school. She said you go places and that. Good for you. But jeest watch that lot. Oor Lisa could run rings round a matador.'

  'She's very sweet,' I said. He looked at me with pale pink eyes. I thought we might be friends in a different world.

  'Perhaps,' he said.

  The man with the wet moustache leaned against the bar and exhaled his warm breath in my face. The women were still up on a dance floor entirely free of men. 'So, you'll no' be doing the Slosh then, Father?' he said, smirking at his watch.

  'I'm still not sure what it is,' I said. 'An American-style barn dance for west coast of Scotland people who hate having Trident submarines nearby and aren't hairy-arsed warriors or haggis-eaters but who hate the English middle classes? Sounds fun.'

  'Get lost,' said Mr Nolan.

  The people who worked the shore were employed to tear out the mussels, leaving the petroleum-coloured shells in a mound against the seaward side of a low granite wall. The beach was strewn with rubbish of every description: one could see glass twinkling in the moonlight and hear the faint rustle of bags at the edge of the sea. The smell was so high it reminded me of the French poet's lily that soaks up blue antipathies. I looked behind me at the hotel, the disco lights, the sound of people becoming themselves again. Two young girls were lying on the bonnet of a car, drinking and talking. They soon staggered across the road dripping with bottles and handbag straps, their continuous laughter swallowed by the hotel doors, leaving us standing at the edge of the car park around the orange glow of Mark's cigarette.

  Mark had approached me from behind as I stood in the cold. He seemed high on something but just smiled when I asked him what he'd taken. During my time with Mark and Lisa, around the housing estate or at the school, in playgrounds or at church events they had come to in search of trouble, they often smelled of glue and spoke to me as if I were a natural enemy of authority. They spoke of stolen money and air pistols and homemade cider. They went out joyriding at night while pretending to sleep over with friends. Over the months, I began to know worse things about them, how little they cared about life, how dehumanised they could be, yet I know I did nothing to oppose them. I gave in to every aspect of them, every aspect of myself. I watched them as one might watch people in a film, because he was beautiful, because I liked the way they seemed to think of me.

  Late one night, Mark and Lisa appeared at the rectory in the company of a feral-looking boy they called Chubb. They stood in the chapel lane throwing gravel up at the window. I could hear them laughing as I came down the stairs, and when I opened the door, I saw full bottles of milk stood in rows across the path.

  'What's this?' I said.

  'Milk bottles,' said Mark. 'Just me and my homeys. Do you need any milk?'

  'No, I don't. Where are they from?'

  'People's doors,' said Lisa, giggling. 'We raided all the doors for milk and now we don't know what to do with them.'

  'That's childish,' I said.

  'It's funny,' said Mark. He looked defiant. 'It's gonnae be hell for them in the morning wanting their cornflakes. Can you imagine it?'

  'Just about.'

  'Can we come inside?'

  'Certainly not. Take those bottles back where they belong.'

  'No chance,' said Lisa. 'We need to sit down. We're tired.'

  Rather bold in himself, the one called Chubb put his cold hand out for shaking when Mark introduced us.

  'What kind of name is Chubb?' I said.

  Lisa broke the seal on one of the bottles and started pouring milk down the drain at the edge of the path.

  'He's good with locks,' Mark said.

  The new boy wore a grin that showed his sharp little teeth.

  'It's nae bother, Father,' he said. 'Just a wee laugh with the milk bottles and that, but no harm done, know what I mean?'

  'It's theft,' I said. 'You should take them back before people wake up and notice they're missing.'

  'Talk to the hand,' said Lisa.

  The three seemed luminous in the chapel's shadow. When I returned upstairs I could hear their laughter in the distance, then the smashing of bottles over the road where they had stopped at the bus shelter. I changed into my clothes and drove out to find them on the estate, the four of us ending up on the steps of the school playground, just sitting together and smoking, talking about drugs that people used to take in the 1960s, the youngsters boasting about all the things they didn't care about. They expressed their hatred of teachers and their liking of me, drinking milk, and me drinking milk along with them, forgetting the time. In the houses people were sleeping, not missing us, and Mark reached over and wiped my mouth with the sleeve of his jacket. 'You've got a moustache,' he said.

  They loved to practise driving in my car at an industrial estate situated in some fields next to the dual carriageway. Mark would twiddle through the radio stations until he found one that sounded illegal and black.

  'This tune is butter,' said Mark. 'Eat it up.'

  'I
love this one,' said Lisa.

  'Not too loud,' I said.

  'God, I wish we had urselves a bottle of Tanqueray,' said Mark. 'Gin and juice and we'd really get our swerve on.'

  A lot of empty factories up there, places where the young people could shout and their voices would echo from one end of the shed to the other. All the glass was broken. Our favourite used to be owned by a company that made denim garments. I think it was called Blue Bell. Anyway, we went there several times, and I can still see us sat down, smoking on the oily ground, Mark tossing lit matches across the shed, and Lisa dancing or jumping or running the length of the building, sometimes coming back with handfuls of metal buttons, the ones you get on blue jeans, which she found in some corner and gave out as tokens of her love.

  That was how our friendship grew: nights like that. They fought in front of me and they sang stupid songs; they cursed and argued and we drove places in the car or ate chocolate that Mark had stolen from the Blue Star garage. Perhaps they knew me, in their careless way, much better than I did them. Their desolation seemed greatly addictive at the time, and I sat waiting for them to bring me into their world.

  'I could teach you how to do the Internet,' said Chubb.

  'That would be very kind,' I said.

  'I could get you a cheap laptop, as well.'

  'There'll be no need for that.'

  The wedding night, Mark and I walked to the pier. He told me an endless story about the best man being drunk and locked in a room. I lifted my head and saw Ardrossan Castle standing bare and open on the headland, a window up there at the top, the dark wind rushing through. I imagined Mary, Queen of Scots appearing at the window, her eyes scanning the wrong horizon for France, her fierce, feeling eyes dropping to the sands, the stretch of beach now coloured with disco pinks and sapphire clouds from the hotel. We walked back to a car Mark held the keys of and sat inside with the music thumping behind us.