‘Em, by whose decree?’ I asked. ‘This is a public bar.’ He looked at me for what felt like 150 years. Then he sniggered, snorted, huffed, and swayed, before wetting his middle finger and sticking it in my ear.
‘Aye, but – wi’ private security,’ he said, wiggling his finger.
‘Look, mate,’ I said, my heart thumping. ‘We’re just out for a drink. Not looking for any trouble at all.’
‘But we are,’ he said. ‘We love trouble.’
‘Em. I totally sympathise.’ Nervous laughter. ‘Trouble has its own, em … charm. Undoubtedly. I mean, personally, I can’t understand why anybody wouldn’t love trouble. It’s just such an underrated—’
‘Stop. Talking. Ya. Dick.’
‘Of course—’
‘Shut. It.’
He inspected me and flicked my collar, like a lion toying with a dead gazelle. He inclined his head and I thought, This is it, he’s going to nut me. At any second his large head would be crashing into mine, and I’d be out forever. Smithereens. ‘What are you, anyway?’ he said. ‘Some kind of university study group?’
‘No, just—’
‘Shut. Up.’ But while he stared, his rictus became a smile. ‘I’ll let you off,’ he said eventually, and tapped my shoulder as he left. Such is the mercy of kings, gods, psychopaths, and lions, so savage in fury, so benign in forgiveness.
It marked no obvious change in the pub’s atmosphere. Broiling and pissed-up like the Rangers end on a Saturday, it seemed to grow hotter with delayed violence, and we were surrounded by ill-wishers of every stripe, looking over. Tully, being a specialist in the reversal of obvious outcomes, took on the threat by standing up on a chair and performing what I can only describe as a deconstruction of the Glasgow pub song. He did it with his eyes closed and his hand on his twenty-year-old heart.
‘Aw, je suis. Origami. Vertigo,’ he sang.
‘Who the fuck is that tube?’ said the guy with the angry eyes.
‘Aw, je suis …’
‘Would somebody just lamp him.’
‘Aw, je suis. Origami. Vertigo.’
Tully in his happy hour. He sang it about twenty times, and the atmosphere in the pub gradually changed and people started to laugh. I’d never seen a performance like it. He had the Glasgow singing style down pat, the well of sorrow, the swell of sentiment, the average passion raised to a wobbly vibrato.
‘Aw, je suiseeeeeeee. Origami-i-i-i-i-i-i-i. Vert-i-go-o-o-o-o.’
Originality is a gambler, and Tully stepped down from his chair the best sort of hero, the best sort of hero in those parts, a comedian. The lords of extinction were suddenly on our side and the drink flowed and the ashtray was full.
‘I’ve worked out a plan, so I have,’ Tibbs said.
‘For what?’
‘The weekend. There’s tomorrow and there’s Saturday. The bus gets into Manchester just after two.’ He spread a few beer mats on the table. It was like General Patton planning the advance of the Third Army through France. ‘We go to Piccadilly Records. We hit the town centre for a few beers. We get some grub on our way to the International Club and we go and see the Shop Assistants. I don’t know where we sleep. So that’s tomorrow. On Saturday we go round the shops.’
‘Fuck the shops,’ Tully said. ‘I want to see Manchester.’
‘Obviously,’ Tibbs said.
‘What time at G-Mex for the gig on Saturday?’ I asked.
‘All-dayer, but nothing will happen before two,’ Tully said. ‘And we’re going to have the daftest time anybody’s ever had in history,’ he said. ‘Then we go to the Hacienda. Then we lie down and then we die.’
*
At closing time we went back to the flat with chips. On the way up the street, Limbo was drunkenly advertising his cultural programme. ‘I want to announce the forthcoming publication of my first novel,’ he said. ‘A masterpiece of sadistic philosophy. It will blow the lid off the literary world. It is called The Sausage.’
‘Eat your heart out, A Clockwork Orange,’ Tully said.
At this Limbo pulled a Curly Wurly from his pocket and tore it open with his teeth as he staggered towards his building. No light on the stairs, a kerfuffle of boots in the hall, and then Hogg, standing in the middle of the living room with a joint in one hand and a dripping paintbrush in the other. Over the walls and the ceiling he’d repeatedly daubed the word ‘Nag, Nag, Nag’ in yellow paint. A naked light bulb was overhead and you could see the blobs of paint in Hogg’s hair and down his legs and over the floor. ‘How about it?’ he said. ‘I am the Jackson of Pollok.’
5
At the back of the bus, wee Tibbs was offering a lecture on Margaret Thatcher’s poisonous relations with South Africa. ‘If she doesn’t agree to sanctions,’ he said, ‘I hope every African nation boycotts the Commonwealth Games. What are the Games anyhow but the burning embers of British imperialism?’
‘That’ll be bad for Edinburgh,’ Hogg said. This was a very adult comment, so it led almost instantly to a general onslaught on his recently purchased car. Limbo called it the Poser Mobile and Tully called it the Shaggin’ Wagon and Hogg was defensive. ‘It’s a silver Capri,’ he said, ‘a perfectly respectable motor. You’re all jealous.’
‘It’s a dick-mobile, David,’ I said. ‘If you’re going to drive a Capri you might as well grow a moustache and call yourself Gavin.’
‘That’s horribly true,’ said Limbo. He wasn’t saying much. He was reading a copy of the Daily Record as if it was Plato’s Republic. He was also drinking quite heavily from an unpronounceable half-bottle of vodka.
‘And you can fuck off,’ Hogg said. ‘None of you clowns has even passed your test. And you have the cheek to slag off my motor.’
‘Fuck your motor,’ Tibbs said. ‘We’re talking about South Africa. And I’m saying the world should jump on Thatcher’s head if she still opposes sanctions.’
‘And I’m saying that will fuck up the chance for Edinburgh to make a few quid.’ He was still nettled. ‘None of you pays any taxes.’ He nodded to me. ‘He’s just out of school, Limbo’s a fuckan layabout.’
‘Why, thank you, sir,’ Limbo said, not looking up.
‘And Tully and Tibbs—’
‘We pay our taxes!’ Tibbs interrupted. ‘We don’t earn what you earn. But you’d probably side wi’ the National Coal Board.’
‘As I was saying,’ Hogg continued, ‘you’re not adults.’
The egocentric strategies of childhood don’t always go on to become adult traits, but I think we all believed, pretty instinctively, that they would with Hogg. We could see him on a hill somewhere, looking down on us with his finer knowledge and his hire-purchase Capri, but our senses agreed that the loss was his.
‘To fuck with Edinburgh,’ Tibbs said. We settled back and looked out the window at the passing high-rises, and Tibbs again took his G-Mex ticket out of his jacket pocket to examine it. ‘I wish Manchester was in Scotland,’ he said. ‘I mean – the Fall, New Order, the Smiths. It’s a nuclear fuckfest of musical talent.’ He turned the ticket over in his hands and then he kissed it right in the middle.
Tully stood up and beamed over the back of his seat. ‘He’s like Willy Wonka holding the golden ticket,’ he said.
‘Charlie,’ I said. ‘It’s Charlie that gets the ticket. Wonka is the weirdo who owns the factory.’
‘Capitalist pig,’ Tibbs said.
We talked a lot about the festival and Tibbs obsessed every now and then about what he was calling ‘the plan’ – where we’d go, in what order, and what we’d see and how. He’d rehearsed the list again and augmented it, but it was sparse of practical contingencies, like eating, sleeping, and washing, and remained heavy on verbs associated with drinking, seeing, and finding girls who might be up for a snog.
Only three of us brought bags: Hogg, Tibbs, and me. Thinking about it now, I see how young we were, wanting our clean T-shirts. The bags were a pain all weekend, lying under tables, being left behind. Hogg and I had ma
tching tartan duffel bags, his red and mine green. His was full of tapes and snacks. Mine was full of toothpaste, changes of clothes, and a book I never took back to the library. Tully had a toothbrush in the top pocket of his leather jacket and Limbo had no items at all. ‘Jesus,’ Tully said, ‘you’re like a caravan of gypsies with all this crap to drag around.’
‘Not me,’ Limbo said. ‘I travel light.’
In Limbo’s flat, I’d done my best under the freezing tap with a lump of Imperial Leather. The result: I was sleek as a week in Saint-Tropez. The situation: both ears were scrubbed, the neck was pristine, and the excess lather was holding up the quiff. I wore jeans with turn-ups and a Harrington my mother had got me from Kays Catalogue, plus a white T-shirt, and black suede shoes I’d borrowed from Tully.
A conversation began about which instrument Karl Marx would play if he was in the Fall. It grew instantly heated. ‘He’d play the glockenspiel,’ Hogg said. ‘Because he’s German and it’s about banging metal. An industrial sound, and that fits with what he says about the means of production. Definitely the glockenspiel.’
‘You’re full of shite, so you are,’ Tibbs said. ‘That instrument …’
‘Glockenspiel.’
‘Aye, that. Marx would never play it. Totally bourgeois piece of shit. And Mark E. would never have it in the band. He’d sack him. Even if it was Marx and he agreed with him about the proletariat and all that, he’d boot him out. He could play the bass. A good, solid bass player in the Fall, that’s Marx.’
‘Glockenspiel.’
‘I’m going to put your head through that fuckan window if you say it one more time,’ Tibbs said. ‘There isn’t one good song featuring that thing.’
‘Wrong. John Lennon uses it in “Only a Northern Song”.’
‘It’s a hippy contraption.’
‘Glock—’
Hogg jumped out of the way to avoid Tibbs’s fist. Both were grinning. ‘I’m actually going to batter you, Davie.’ It had always been a comical fact about Tibbs: he mentioned violence but he never remotely engaged in any. It was part of the comedy of teenage life to threaten people with ‘a doing’ you couldn’t really imagine. ‘It’s the Catholic laziness ethic,’ Tibbs said when I questioned him about it. ‘You see it in football quite a lot. We like to get angry but we’re too lazy to fight.’
We were soft as Tunnock’s Teacakes, sentimental as sherbet.
Tully tried to lighten the mood by introducing the subject of Sheila Grant and the rape storyline on Brookside. At the time, we were all addicted to the Liverpool soap opera and it took up a fair amount of our conversation. Limbo suddenly perked up. ‘I’m with the popular newspaper columnist Joan Burnie,’ he said. ‘Brookside is not just soap opera. It is social commentary of the highest order.’
‘Hear, hear,’ I said. Limbo had gone all academic. I was never sure if he did this in tribute to his father or just as general mockery.
‘It seems obvious,’ he went on, ‘that Brookside speaks to the national mood in terms of the decimation of our communities, and it addresses our latent, vicious attitudes towards women and other vulnerable groups.’
‘Shut your face,’ Tibbs said. ‘This is serious.’
‘How come nobody thinks I’m serious when I’m serious?’ Limbo asked, twisting round when Tully slapped the back of his head.
There was much shouting, a bottle of Merrydown cider was doing the rounds, then Tully announced a brand-new Top Three, our main method of assessing character. ‘Name your top three best films starring Robert De Niro.’
‘Too easy,’ I said. ‘The Godfather, Part II. Taxi Driver. And Once Upon a Time in America.’
‘Only a wearer of arseless chaps would leave out Raging Bull,’ Tibbs said.
‘Good point,’ Tully said, stubbing out a fag.
‘Top three best goals ever scored by a Scottish player,’ Tibbs said.
In unison: ‘Archie Gemmill.’
‘Too obvious,’ he said.
‘Have there been three goals?’ I asked.
‘Fuckan traitor,’ Hogg said. (Still not over the motor.)
‘Check it out,’ Tully said. ‘Number one … the other Gemmell.’
‘Celtic versus Inter Milan, 1967 European Cup Final,’ Tibbs said.
‘Aye,’ Tully replied. ‘I hate the Pope’s Eleven, but that was a brilliant goal.’
Tibbs stood up and put his hands out, swaying with the bus. He was excited and when Tibbs was excited he flushed like a newborn. His eyes were staring out so blue at the memory of a world-shaping triumph. ‘After going down one-nil,’ he said, ‘Gemmell’s goal totally demoralised the Milan players and led to the Celtic victory.’
‘Fine,’ Tully said. ‘That’s number one. Number two is Kenny Dalglish’s goal for Liverpool against FC Bruges in the 1978 Cup Final.’
‘That’s never a best Scottish goal,’ Tibbs said. ‘It’s not even one of the best from Dalglish.’
‘Is it your Top Three or mine?’ Tully asked.
‘What about Kenny’s goal for Scotland in the World Cup play-off at Anfield against Wales?’
‘Shut it, Tibbs!’ Tully threw his arms up then slouched back against the window. He looked round at the rest of us and said, ‘What a prick. It’s my shout.’ When it came to football lore, Tibbs could enter a reverie. He wasn’t even on the bus any more. He was on some celestial pitch that lies deep behind Kenny Cloud Nine.
‘I declare this Top Three null and void,’ Tully said.
‘I’m talking about 12 October 1977,’ Tibbs went on. ‘Scotland were one up from a controversial penalty before Martin Buchan – by the grace of Mary – sent in a beautiful cross which Kenny headed into the net.’ Tibbs crossed his arms and walked with great concentration down the bus, explaining to the other passengers, most of whom averted their eyes and held on to their bags, the effect of this goal on world events. ‘This particular header,’ he said, ‘sent Scotland to the 1978 World Cup in Argentina. Now …’
‘Here we go,’ Tully said.
‘… though this was one of my favourite Scottish goals ever,’ Tibbs continued, ‘it inadvertently led to the rise of Thatcherism and all its horrors.’
‘Oh, take me to Cuba,’ Tully said. ‘Lay me down in the Bay of Pigs.’
Tyrone Lennox was on a roll. ‘In 1978,’ he said, ‘Ally MacLeod whipped the whole nation into a patriotic frenzy so he did, which ended in ignominy and humiliation. The aftermath of the Argentina campaign is widely accepted to be the main reason the Scottish devolution bill failed in the referendum of March 1979. This led to the Scottish Nationalists withdrawing support for the minority Labour government and a subsequent vote of “no confidence” led to the election won by Margaret Thatcher.’
He was a juggernaut of reason.
‘Open-and-shut case,’ Tully said. ‘Goal makes Dole.’
Cheers.
Looks of amazement.
‘You’re all wrong,’ Hogg said. ‘The best Dalglish goal was against England at Hampden in 1976.’
‘Right through the goalie’s legs!’ Tully shouted.
‘Precisely,’ Hogg said. ‘A miracle.’
‘I think that goal led directly to the independence of Djibouti,’ Tibbs said, smiling, ‘and the election of Jimmy Carter as president.’
*
Everybody needed to pee when we got to Gretna Green. Limbo was lively again, so there was piss-fencing at the urinals. Tully wanted Lucozade and came out of the garage with a small bottle and an armful of cheese and onion crisps. I was lying on a grass verge staring at the sun. He chucked me a packet. ‘What you thinking about, Noodles?’
‘I can’t wait to get there.’
‘I know, man, it’s going to be bananas. No way was I missing it, not for anything. Even if they wanted me to stay …’
‘Who’s “they”?’ I asked. He rolled the Lucozade bottle between his palms and frowned as he shook his head. ‘Forget it, man.’
I stood up. ‘Where will we sleep in Mancheste
r?’
‘I’m sure they’ve got park benches. Your old pal here’ll take care of you.’
Loyalty came easily to Tully. Love was the politics that kept him going. I wanted to read for a while and he winked when I said I’d find a seat on my own. ‘Stay free,’ he said. The sun was behind him, and when I wiped the grass off my hands and went to climb back on the bus, it blocked him out and glinted off his bangles. I looked over at the trees. Everything was new and everything was fresh. The service station was surrounded by Scots pines; a breeze came through them and you could sense the border. I don’t think the pines registered then, but they do now, reminding me of the English classroom, Mrs O’Connor and her red hair, Yeats’s ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ – and those final trees, somewhere in the future, where we climbed the hill and the scent said memento mori.
6
The fields gradually turned to red brick, the road giving out to streets, to multiple signs and office buildings and people walking by. When I thought of England as a child it was always of somewhere on the other side of the afternoon’s horizon, a kind of sweet-tempered, wholly imagined Arcadia, where people read books to their children and baked cakes for them. It wasn’t really England at all, but a sort of fantasy of well-being that came with the word ‘foreign’.
We came into Manchester like air into Xanadu. The place was a state of mind to us and we saw cascades of glitter in ordinary things. Portland Street was wide open and the buses – ‘Macclesfield’, ‘Cheetham Hill’ – rumbled past as we crossed the road and turned the corner and tried to establish our bearings. Piccadilly Records was part of a dowdy strip next to Piccadilly Gardens, but it felt like the headquarters of high taste, full of nodding young worshippers flicking through the bins. It was just after 3 p.m. when we came in, and Limbo was talking to no one in particular. ‘If Jesus Christ had done cool stuff,’ he said, ‘like if he’d starred in The Driller Killer or directed I Spit on Your Grave, then I would be like John the Baptist, telling everybody to sign up.’
Mayflies Page 4
