by Peter Arnott
13.10
Picture them. Meeting again after all this time. Old friends. Frank and Tommy. Picture Tommy with his bandaged hand and Frank in his ruined suit. Picture the moon that rose through a hole in the clouds. Picture Ronnie and Janette, suddenly understanding that there were worse and more unpredictable things in the world than to be their father.
No birds sang. They could all see the sound of their own breathing. Janette hugged her brother to her as Tommy greeted the ragged, distraught figure who was pointing one gun at him while holding another limply in his other hand.
“Hello, Frank,” said Tommy, genuinely surprised. “Didn’t expect to see you.”
It is again tribute to the variety of human perception that while Frank had spent the last few days obsessing about Tommy Hunter, that it had never so much as crossed Tommy’s mind to think about seeing Frank again and that he was genuinely surprised and not unhappy to do so.
“Why couldn’t you just stay away?” Frank must have asked him, pained and bitter.
“These are my kids,” Tommy said as if they were two old chums bumping into each other on Byres Road. “This is Janette. You know Ronnie.”
Frank threw his extra gun, the one that he’d used to kill his brother, at Tommy’s feet.
“Pick up the gun,” he told him.
“How’s Joe?” Tommy asked him. “Haven’t seen Joe in ages.”
“Pick up the gun,” said Frank.
Tommy shook his head.
“I’ll kill you,” said Frank. “I’ll kill them.”
“No you won’t,” said Tommy, and held his hand out and started to walk towards his old friend.
“I’m dead,” Frank said. “You killed me,” he added.
“I know,” said Tommy, not knowing anything of the kind, and took the gun away from him. Frank fell on his knees, awaiting the end.
13.10.1
“Kill the cunt,” Ronnie advised his father.
“Ronnie!” Tommy admonished his son.
He threw the gun away and turned his back on Frank without a backward glance. He and his family set off again up the moor.
13.11
There is little that remains to tell. Frank was found kneeling silently at the same spot where Tommy’d left him. He has not yet been found psychiatrically fit to stand trial for his various crimes against the tax authorities and for the original robbery or the murders of Jack Webster and his own brother with which he has been charged and to which his wife and children have abandoned him. There are those who think this mental disability fraudulent, now DI “Danny” Boyle (predictably) among them. But Frank met Tommy Hunter at the strangest and darkest moment of his life. And I think that is sufficient explanation of any amount of trauma. Any depth of silence.
13.12
Hunter and his children were among the last handful of refugees who stood in the exposed peatland of the moor listening to the train coming for five minutes before it could be seen. They didn’t speak. They didn’t ask each other questions about what had happened to them or about what might happen to them next. I don’t imagine that Tommy, at this stage, thought that he was in any position to give any fatherly advice. It had only ever been possible for this family to have been a family for the briefest moment in time. He must have accepted that.
13.12.1
The train when it came up the single track laid by those heroic navigators in that bygone time itself proved to be something of an antique. It still had doors you had to open manually with the window rolled down. The doors still had those lovely brass door handles in the shape of a supine, stretched out number 8. The guard and the catering manager were probably surprised at the number of passengers getting on at so isolated a station.
13.12.2
It must have been before the train had picked up too much speed that Hunter gave the carpet bag with £19,492.04 therein to Janette, knowing that she’d probably do something sensible like pay the deposit on a flat for the two of them somewhere and put the rest in a savings account. Maybe they’d get somewhere nice like the West End or Helensburgh.
13.12.2.1
I like to think that Ronnie maybe apologised to his father then, maybe saying he was sorry he’d shot him. Maybe he even called him Dad again. Maybe Tommy tousled Ronnie’s hair with his good hand. He probably advised them both before he left his seat that they should get off at a station before Queen Street. There were bound to be police waiting when the train got into Glasgow so they should get off before that. Singer or Partick or somewhere.
13.12.2.2
In any case, at some point when they were still on Rannoch Moor, Tommy opened the door of the moving train and stepped out into space. The kids didn’t even see him land wherever he landed. They didn’t see if he rolled and recovered, didn’t see if he smiled and waved goodbye or if, the last free man on earth, he started walking into the infinite west, on his way to somewhere else beneath the moon.
13.12.2.3
Did Tommy let go of them the way he did – of his children, of Janice – because he finally understood? That he was not one of us? That he had no business being among us? That no matter what his intentions, his effect on everyone he encountered, from Elspeth to Agnes to Mr McIvor to poor Jack Webster to the Wheens, was destructive? Did he leave us for fear of hurting us more than we’re already hurt? Is that why he’s gone?
13.13
Of what we cannot know, we had best be silent.
Copyright
© Peter Arnott 2015
Published on 29 May 2015 by
Vagabond Voices Publishing Ltd.
Glasgow
Scotland
ISBN 978-1-908251-55-8
The author’s rights to be identified as author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 have been asserted.
Printed and bound in Poland
Cover design by Mark Mechan
Typeset by Park Productions
The publisher acknowledges subsidy towards this publication from Creative Scotland
For further information on Vagabond Voices, see the website:
www.vagabondvoices.co.uk
