The Credit Draper

by J David Simons

  Forty-one

  THE SMALL HUT SERVING AS THE DRESSING ROOM and kit store of the Argyll Thistle stank of its usual stale sweat and cheap hair oil. In the corner stood the hamper for the next day’s match. Avram had already stolen a look under the lid at the new strips, specially purchased. Dark blue. All neatly pressed and folded in a tension for the important occasion. There was to be a full house, and the biggest gate receipts since the club was founded in 1900 by the team posing stiff and stern in the only photograph hanging on the wall. Argyll Thistle – as old as he was, as old as the century – had won nothing in all its history. Not even the Laird’s Challenge Cup, which had gone to Glenkura Athletic every season but the war years. All the resources of the town’s youth and patronage had been channelled into the shinty. But still the tight-lipped faces in the photograph stared down at him in defiance of their betrayal of the Highlands’ traditional sport. And he thought that if they could smile, they would do so now. The team they had founded might be odds-on favourites to lose the morrow’s game, but the club wouldn’t lose money. The match was to be the club’s biggest, a most prosperous moment for the town, and a chance to get one-over on the shinty lovers and the supporters of Glenkura Athletic.

  He peeled off his boots, rubbed the soil and grass off his legs with a piece of damp rag he found among the studded cakes of mud littering the floor like dried-up wedges of cheese. He then eased himself back on the bench, head against the wall’s loose planks, listening to his team-mates outside getting on with the practice session. A tap dripped cold water into a rusted sink. The Celtic players would be excused such primitive facilities. They were to change in their hotel in the town, then be ferried to and from the ground by charabanc.

  The whole shire was thought to be turning out. Then there were the Celtic supporters coming up from Glasgow. Archie thought there might be more than five thousand in total. A makeshift stand had been built to seat a few of the local dignitaries. The nets had been patched up. Avram had even helped paint the white lines across the freshly cut, rolled grass. Stewards had been hired to police the fenced-off areas around the perimeter allocated to Celtic supporters paying good money in advance for tickets to stand in a muddy field. The local folk would be happy clambering up for a free view from the hill overlooking the pitch.

  Avram stirred from his daydreaming, glanced at the wall-clock. He was going to be late.

  He managed to push his way through the mob to the little square outside the station entrance until the sheer mass of bodies stopped his progress. A large banner had been spread across the station wall. It read: ARGYLL THISTLE FOR THE CUP. A couple of constables and a band of railway officials had linked arms in an attempt to form a clear passage for the visitors.

  The Celtic players looked huge, like prize bulls in for market, luminous in their fame, but all slightly awkward in their shining white collars and tight-fitting suits. They moved slowly through the crowd, growing confident as a result of the adulation, shaking outstretched hands, signing autograph books or whatever was thrust in front of them, exchanging cheeky banter with the ladies. Only a few of the team stood off shyly, flinching from the camera-flash set off at the tripod of the local press, ignoring the shouts of recognition, waving at the crowd as if to wave them away.

  Avram spotted Uncle Mendel standing out among them in his black garb and sidelocks, his arms grasped desperately around his brown-paper parcels, wandering around the station forecourt in bemusement at the groups of protesters berating the Celtic contingent.

  “Go back to Ireland, Fenians! Hands off the shipyards, ye Papist shites! Go home, ye Fenian bastards, go home!”

  Uncle Mendel, taking up the socialist cause, shouted back at them. “Workers unite! Workers unite!”

  The jeerers answered him with a hurl of abuse.

  “Catholics and Protestants unite,” he shouted again over his parcels. “Workers unite. Unite against the enemy.”

  “You’re the enemy, ye daft German Jew.”

  Avram tried to push through the bodies in front of him. But Uncle Mendel was not to be shouted down. “The Catholics are not the enemy. The Jews are not the enemy. The landlords are the enemy. The employers are the enemy. The Laird is the enemy. Ah, boychik.” Uncle Mendel half-ran towards him, then tripped over the kerb sending his parcels scattering over the station forecourt, delighting the protesters. Someone from among the crowd assisted him to his feet.

  “Thank you, sir, thank you,” Uncle Mendel said in a bluster to his helper as he brushed the dust off his jacket, hurriedly reassembled his parcels. “The kerb I didn’t see … so many people. Thank you. I am Mendel Cohen. And this is my nephew Avram.”

  There was a hand stretched out for Avram to take. He saw the fine fingers with the clusters of hair around the knuckles, the starch white of the escaped cuff with the Celtic insignia stamped on the links. He nervously put his hand forward, accepted the grip of the man who had won five league championships, two Scottish cups, three Glasgow cups, eight Glasgow Charity cups and two Irish international caps. The grip was as firm as it should be.

  “Avram Escovitz, Mr Gallacher. I play for the Thistle.”

  Patsy was fuller than he remembered. Filled out from the skin and bones he used to be, his suit stretched in a shine over his stocky frame.

  “What position?” The voice was warm. Broad. Irish.

  “Inside forward. Like you.”

  Patsy eyed him up and down, pausing at the mud-caked boots, smiling.

  “Getting ready for us, then?”

  “We need the practice.” He searched for something else to say. “Where are you staying?”

  The Celtic player cocked his head vaguely in the direction of the town. “Caledonian.”

  “Good hotel,” Avram said, although he had no idea if it was. “Excellent view.”

  “Pleased to hear it. I’m going to need a wee rest after this welcome. Well, look after your uncle, lad.”

  “This man I should know?” Uncle Mendel asked as Avram led him away from the crowd.

  “Only if you follow football,” he replied, still buoyed by the thrill of meeting his hero, actually shaking his hand, talking to him man-to-man about the accommodation in town. “That was Patsy Gallacher. The greatest footballer to play for Celtic.”

  “Ah yes,” Uncle Mendel sighed. “The football. Avram the footballer. In the Gorbals, all the Jews talk about this game.”

  Avram hadn’t thought of that. That word of his playing might be of interest to the Jewish community in Glasgow. Solly would know, of course. But he wondered if Papa Kahn stood among his admirers. Or even Celia. Or would she be too involved with her politics to know that the young boy she rejected was going to be stepping out on the same playing field as Glasgow Celtic?

  “What do they say about me?”

  “They say they are proud. Even if on a Shabbos you play.”

  “I have my own life here now, Uncle. And it’s nothing to do with being a Jew playing on a Saturday.”

  Uncle Mendel shrugged. “What do I care?”

  “What you need to care about is how you speak to these protesters. Feelings run high. Even up here, away from the shipyards. Away from Glasgow. It’s the Church that binds here. You know that. Not your socialism.”

  “Bah. They have to understand. The workers have to stand together. Not with this religion to divide themselves.”

  “How can you say that? Look at you. Look at the way you are dressed. With your yarmulke. And your tsitsis hanging out from under your waistcoat. Look how you divide yourself from the rest.”

  “In my clothes, perhaps I am different. But in my heart, there is no hate for others not like me.”

  Forty-two

  THE OBAN ARMS WAS HEAVING with Celtic supporters. A jagged current of excitement ran through the place combining with the hum of the electric lamps recently installed. The regulars had surrendered to the invasion, closed up their domino-boxes, joined in the banter. Except Uncle Mendel. He sat twisted away in a corner, one
hand clasping a parcel, the other clutched around his very own shot-glass. He had knocked back two whiskies in ten minutes and was now on his third. Avram wondered why his uncle hadn’t just bought a half-pint glass of the spirit. It would have saved him these trips to the bar through the crush.

  “Are you all right, Uncle?”

  Uncle Mendel tapped his fingers on the knot of the parcel. His face was flushed but cheerless.

  “What you were looking for I found.”

  “You found the fabric?”

  “Yes, yes, the airplane fabric. All as you said. From an airplane manufacturer in Carmunnock. Rolls of it, he had in stock. All his advance orders gone kaput now the war is over. So the fabric we can have. Cheap. And the lacquer too. Barrels of it.”

  “Lacquer? You mean the fabric isn’t already waterproofed?”

  “Na, na, na. You have to paint it on yourself. It is not easy. But Sadie at the shop, she knows how to do this. Her sister was – how does Sadie tell it? – yes, a doper. She was a doper during the war. Painting the lacquer on the planes. A doper. Yes, that’s it.”

  “So what’s difficult about it?”

  “If you want to make clothing, not airplanes, it is difficult. But Sadie, she knows. The cloth shrinks with the painting, so you have to cut it a size bigger. Then you need to stretch it over the shape you want. Then you paint it. But not too much, or the fabric becomes too stiff. Just two coats. That’s all. Sadie, she does this. Her sister was a doper.”

  “And this is it?” Avram asked, pointing at the parcel.

  “Smocks, leggings, hats. From the sketches you gave me. Sadie made them up. The cost is very cheap. Much cheaper than these coats from Macintosh. But one thing you must know.”

  “What?”

  “It is very easy to go on fire. Whoosh! Just like that. Because of this lacquer. Waterproof maybe. But not fireproof.”

  “Let me see.” Avram quickly fished out his penknife but Uncle Mendel kept his hand on the knot.

  “There is something else, Avram. Something else to tell you about this waterproof clothing. Herr Stein says he will help us. The idea he likes. The capital he will lend us in exchange for a share of the profits.”

  “That depends. How much of a share?”

  “This we need to work out. It will be reasonable. But there is a condition.” Uncle Mendel picked up his third whisky, drank back half. “And you will not like it.”

  Avram thought of the warehouse owner ensconced in his leather chair, cigar wedged between his fat fingers, staring at his portrait likeness as he tried to squeeze the best deal out of Uncle Mendel. “I knew with Jacob Stein there would be something.”

  “A good Jew I try to be, Avram. Others I try to help. But myself I cannot help. Please forgive me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Uncle Mendel turned in his chair, waved at two men sat in a huddle at a table behind. The older man Avram remembered. Hard to forget a face so red-ravaged from drink, the large tuberous nose. Avram guessed he was a local bookie from the surreptitious way he’d seen Uncle Mendel hand over money in the past in this very same pub. But the younger man also looked familiar. It was he who stood at the beckoning, walked over in a swagger, pushing carelessly between tables. A double-breasted suit hung too loose on his skinny frame.

  “Remember me, Escovitz?” His thin lips parted into a sneer of broken teeth.

  Avram scanned the long, sickly face. A face that looked as if it had never seen sunlight. The red-hair was swept back in a slick from a corrugated forehead, the cold, green eyes slit into a permanent squint. But it wasn’t any physical feature that jogged Avram’s memory. It was the sheer sense of tight, screwed-up menace in this young man’s wiry frame that sent his mind back to a dreary winter’s afternoon on a cinder football pitch.

  “Dodds,” he said, recalling his vicious opponent from that day. “Ginger Dodds.”

  “Very good, Escovitz. But William Dodds, it is tae ye. Now that we’re all grown up and doing business.” Dodds pulled out a chair in a scrape, twirled it round so the back faced the table, sat down in a straddle across the seat. He dug a hand into his pocket, scattered some coins at Uncle Mendel. “Get us a drink, old man. And one for yerself.”

  Dodds waited for Uncle Mendel to leave. “We could’ve won a lot of money back then. If it wasnae for ye, Jew boy.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “That schoolboys semi-final.” Dodds scratched vigorously at a cheek, scraping off white flecks of skin on to his suit lapel. “It was Victoria and Cathcart supposed to go through tae the final. Not yer team of gobshites. Until ye scored that fucking goal frae the corner.”

  “What do you mean Victoria and Cathcart was supposed to win?”

  “Our money was on the V and C. I was tae put ye out the gemme. And yer goalie got two shillings for his trouble. Goal in the first minute. Remember?” Dodds laughed. “Then that fucking gym teacher whacked me.” He opened his mouth wide, pointed to an ugly space where a tooth should have been.

  “Begg,” Avram said. “Didn’t think you knew who or what hit you.”

  “I knew it was Roy Begg, all right. The wan-eyed monster himself. Interfering fucker.”

  “So if the game was supposed to be fixed, who fixed it?”

  “Can ye no guess?”

  “Haven’t a clue.”

  “Yer man Stein.”

  “What?”

  “Aye. The wan and only. Grand bailie of the City of fucking Glasgow.”

  Avram sat back in his chair. Jacob Stein. Mr front-seat-in-the-synagogue, closer-to-God, larger-than-life Jacob Stein. Jacob Stein betting on schoolboy football matches.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Ask yer man here.”

  Uncle Mendel, returned from the bar, searched to find a space on the table for the drinks. His hands shook as he placed the glasses on the table.

  “What Mr Dodds says is true, Avram.”

  “What’s Jacob Stein doing betting on football matches? Never mind fixing them?”

  “There was no much horse racing then,” Dodds said. “With the war and that. No trains to take the punters tae the track. So yer man Stein got intae betting on the football. Some bookies came up with the odds, took the bets. Like yer man back there.” Dodds jerked his head in the direction of his table. “As for influencing the result? Well, the rich aye want tae get richer.”

  “Is that why you’re here now?”

  “Clever boy.”

  “So what’s there to fix? Celtic will win. Only a few local romantics would bet on the Thistle. Don’t tell me you’ve bribed the Celtic players to lose?”

  Dodds wriggled his chair closer to the table. “Of course, yer right. Celtic will thrash ye. They aye do against these wee teams. Eight-nil, nine-nil, ten-nil, twenty-nil. Disnae matter how many. Whit we need is a goal against them.”

  “That’s the bet?”

  “Aye, that’s the bet. A goal against Celtic.”

  “And that’s what you want me for? To score against Celtic? Just like that. You think I can just waltz around a bunch of internationals and bang the ball into the net whenever I want to?”

  “Disnae have tae be ye personally.”

  Avram laughed. “I don’t think a bunch of coopers and fishermen will score against Celtic, either. We just want to keep the hammering down to a decent level.”

  “Yer no understanding me, Jew boy. There has to be a goal.”

  “I understand you very well, Dodds. And what I’m saying is I don’t know where that goal will come from.”

  “And whit I’m saying is this. Yer a good player, Escovitz. I have tae admit that. And considering the Celtic know fuck-all about ye, their marking will be slack. And that should give ye a chance to dribble yer way into their penalty area at least once in the ninety minutes. And if ye can get a shot in and score… well, that would be very nice. I’m sure ye would be delighted with such a result yerself. But if yer finding there isnae a goal be
ing scored, there are other things ye could do when yer visiting their penalty area.”

  “You want me to take a dive?”

  “Ye never heard me utter such a word. I’d just like ye to shift the odds a little in our favour, that’s all.” Dodds stood up, placed a hand on Uncle Mendel’s shoulder. “And if there’s a goal, well this man’s debt’s clear. And if there isnae, dinnae think the stakes aren’t high. Just remember, Escovitz. A goal against the Celtic. And yer man here will be fancy-free to make a business. Good idea. Waterproof clothing for the farmers. Shows yer smart. So think smart about whit I said.” Dodds rolled his shoulders, spun on his heels and moved off to his table.

  “My God, Uncle. How could you do this?”

  “I am weak. So weak.”

  “Forget about being weak. How much do you owe?”

  “A lot. Too much for me to say. From the horses. A run of very bad mazel. From Herr Stein I borrowed to pay off my debts. And then I lose this money too. I’m sorry, boychik. But it is only a game of football. You can do it. This Celtic don’t know how good you are. Do as he says and a clean start we have. A business we have. Clothes against the rain.” Uncle Mendel started tearing the paper off the parcel on the table. “Look, a waterproof hat. And a smock. With pockets. Clothes against the rain, Avram. Just like you said. Your idea. Such a business we will make. You and me.”

  Avram stared at the waterproof samples as they were held up before him. Like pathetic white flags of surrender.

  Forty-three

  “IT’S JUST LIKE GOING OVER THE TOP,” Bobby Logan the goalkeeper said. “Over the top of the trenches.” He stood in the centre of the tiny dressing room, gleaming like a bumble-bee in his new yellow jersey. “It’s opening that door and going out there, not knowing what will happen.”

  Avram sat with the rest of the team, squeezed tight in the row of benches round the hut, glad for the closeness of the bodies against the cold. Until Logan had got to his feet, the room had been silent but for the chants of the crowd filtering in from the outside. Some of the players smoked cigarettes, others swigged whisky from a flask passed around, but most just stared at their feet. Avram watched the minutes clunk by on the wall clock. The faded photograph of the founders looked down at him.