The Big Man

by William McIlvanney

  Dan Scoular, lying back with his head resting thoughtfully on clasped hands, seemed able to endure the sense of futility that seeped from the walls of this place like nerve gas slowly numbing self-delusion. For Frankie White, it was unbearable. It told him too insistently who he wasn’t. It also made him doubt if Dan Scoular was really what Frankie had taken him to be. Frankie began to wonder if big Dan, prostrate and still as a piece of fallen statuary, was the force Frankie, in his eagerness to make capital out of him with Matt Mason, had convinced himself he was. Sitting there with him in the shabby room that was like a locked compartment moving them inexorably towards an already fixed destination, Frankie was given to dreading what they would find when they got there. Maybe Dan simply wasn’t up to it. Where Dan was going, Cutty Dawson had been before. He knew the terrain. It was asking a lot to expect Dan to wander in from a softer place and, with the experience that had taught him his slow smile, wrest submission from the clenching purpose Cutty’s harder experience had made of him. And if he failed, if Dan came apart at the final asking, and deep questions would be put to him in there, the status Frankie bought with Dan Scoular would rebound on him like bad currency.

  To escape the thought, Frankie had suggested they go out as much as they could and walk, see a bit of the city. Dan seemed happy enough to do that. He knew Glasgow as a place to visit occasionally or to pass through from Queen Street Station to Central Station or the Anderston Bus Station. But Frankie knew it as a place to live in. Dan let the other man’s desperate chattiness play across the places they walked through but mostly without paying it much attention. Some of us, faced with the prospect of new experiences, like to send our own or other people’s preconceptions ahead of us like couriers who will process the strangeness of things into the comfort of familiarity, however contrived. Dan Scoular wasn’t like that. He let things happen to him, introduce themselves until he could work out his own sense of them.

  Glasgow came at him with bewildering variety. The handsomeness surprised him. There were whole terraces of buildings he found beautiful, big solid acts of pride. There was more greenery than he had imagined, parks that grew expanses of sudden grass among the stonework. There were streets he wouldn’t have thought anybody could bear to live in, most strikingly for him in the place Frankie called Possil, which he seemed to know well. There was an area they walked once, along the riverside, that depressed him with the size of its emptiness, like an abandoned warehouse.

  There was an elusive but coherent unity he sensed behind the fragmentary impressions he took in, a feeling that identified Glasgow for him as distinct from other places he’d been in. To try to fix it for himself, he groped for a comparison. He knew Edinburgh slightly. He tried to lay his impression of one against the other, wondering where he felt the difference was. He had heard often enough of the supposed rivalries of the two places, familiar crutches for stand-up comedians, how Edinburgh was cold and Glasgow warmer, both in climate and people; how Edinburgh was snooty and Glasgow coarse. He didn’t believe it. He had always liked both places and the people in them. But for him there was a difference, just as physical places, that had always made him feel more at home in Glasgow.

  Walking with Frankie, he worked out without saying it what he thought this was. It went back to something he had felt when they had taught him Scottish history at school. He had been aware of no continuity in it, just a series of jumps from one dramatic figure to another, until the figures became English. It had been as if nobody wanted to try to link the gaps or find out what they meant. It was almost as if Scotland didn’t have any history or, if it did, not many people knew what it was. And he realised suddenly that was where he felt he was when he was walking through Glasgow, in the truth of Scottish history, the living reality of it. It seemed to him that of the few cities he had been in, it was the most serious one, the one that spoke to you most directly. It wasn’t solemn. A lot of times as they walked, they had heard its laughter and its banter on the street. But the genuineness of that laughter was itself the clue, Dan thought. Those who had come to their own difficult understanding with reality were the best laughers. Perhaps that was why Frankie, strolling beside him, laughed like a rattle somebody else was turning.

  That was the difference of the two cities for him. He liked being in Edinburgh but he could never take its beauty quite seriously. It was a monument to a false sense of Scotland. Glasgow bothered him in its own way, the way its handsomeness was pitted with harshness, but it seemed to say without pretence: this is where we’ve really been, this is where we are.

  Where he was had a particular relevance for him at the moment. It was where Cutty Dawson had come from. The half-remarks he had managed to pick up about Cutty Dawson had troubled him and made him more than a little nervous. They were shadows that made it hard to judge the size of the substance that had cast them. All you could tell was that it seemed to be very formidable. He wanted to admit his fear enough to be able to deal with it but not enough to have it overwhelm him. He absorbed Glasgow like a background report on Cutty Dawson, trying to read the signs.

  He had to admit they didn’t look too promising. He saw in the place something he decided was simply true of cities but which hadn’t occurred to him before. Cities perfected individual violence in a way that country places didn’t. It wasn’t just that the competition was greater. It was also because anonymity released violence, not just the anonymity of the victim, the sense that the other might be nobody in particular, but the anonymity of the perpetrator, the loss of inhibiting roots, of the importance of others’ awareness of you and how they might react. Dan sensed that this could be a catchweights contest if Cutty Dawson had learned through his experience here how to free his violence fully. Dan knew himself from Thornbank and he didn’t know how far that sense of a shared morality, however hypocritically or imperfectly shared, might put bindings on his arms when the chances came, if they came at all.

  Fortunately for Frankie White’s already fragile state of mind, Dan didn’t mention any of this to him. They had their walks and came back to the room and Dan sat or lay on the bed, and Frankie could only talk, instead of whistling in their mutual dark, and wonder what was going on behind Dan’s stare as it checked off the stains on the walls in a way Frankie thought would drive him mad.

  Something Matt Mason had said came back again and again into Dan Scoular’s mind. ‘Your first fight, big man, is with yourself.’ He was still having it. It seemed to him a bit like the few times he had gone abroad. It always felt to him as if he didn’t really arrive until a few days after he got there, as if parts of his sense of himself remained missing for a time, like pieces of misdirected luggage. All you could do was wait for them to catch up. In this case, he hoped they all arrived by Sunday.

  In the meantime, he was trying to sharpen his mind as well as his body towards the event. Everything he saw, he was trying to use. Frankie White might not know it, but those walks in the city and his patient absorption of this room, they too were a kind of training.

  ‘He’s an interesting man,’ Roddy Stewart said. ‘I must get you to meet him sometime, Matt.’

  ‘He would bore you to death, Matt,’ Alice Stewart said. ‘Don’t listen to him. Roddy just likes the idea of knowing somebody who’s been on television. Because he’s an actor. And his acting’s as bad in real life as it is on television. He says “Hello” as if it was a major speech.’

  ‘He’s an interesting man. And he’s a better actor than any of the parts he’s had show. He’s one of those actors who’s never found a suitable vehicle for his talent, that’s all.’

  ‘What about a hearse?’

  Roddy and Alice Stewart were doing their cabaret act. They were a couple who had refined their public married life into a series of engagements. At parties or on visits to friends, they didn’t just turn up, they appeared together, like the Lunts. Their special style was smiling invective, apparently venomless mutual antipathy. What went on in the dressing-room, nobody knew.

&n
bsp; ‘And he’s so dumb,’ Alice said. ‘But I think narcissistic people always are. They haven’t taken the time to think of anything but themselves.’

  ‘Maybe it takes one to know one,’ Roddy said.

  ‘He is dumb. He is very possibly the dumbest man I’ve ever met.’

  ‘You’re as generous as ever,’ Roddy said. ‘If there’s reincarnation, Alice is coming back as something else – a human being.’

  ‘You obviously haven’t met Johnny Mallieson,’ Billy Tate said. ‘He was the unofficial world champion for being dumb.’

  Billy Tate had been a famous Scottish footballer, one of the best inside-forwards the country had produced. He owned a pub now and, like a war veteran, his life since retirement had been anti-climactic and slightly aimless. He tended to live off talk of the past like a pension.

  ‘You know what Johnny did once? We were on the plane goin’ to Hungary. One of the boys sets it up with the stewardesses. You know those intercom telephones? Gets a stewardess to tell Johnny he’s wanted on the phone. Johnny sprachles desperately to his feet and follows her to the phone. Sammy Simpson’s at the other end of the plane. Says he’s looking for a filler for the Evening Times diary column. The thoughts of Johnny Mallieson on how he thinks the game’ll go. He’s got Johnny talkin’ there for a full ten minutes. Johnny comes back to his seat tryin’ not to look too big-headed. But he can’t resist it. Says, “How about that, boys? They’re even phonin’ me on the plane now.” Ah mean, he had ten minutes to twig it. How do you phone an aeroplane? We laughed that much, it was like turbulence.’

  The others at the table had threatened to rival that laughter. Dan Scoular recovered first.

  ‘He was a real player, though,’ he said. ‘Nobody that ever saw him is goin’ to forget him. He was just the best at what he did. Any game he wis in, Ah never felt like askin’ for ma money back. He wis a sore-throat player, him.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Billy Tate said.

  ‘The only other one of us at this table that’ll be remembered by as many people is yerself,’ Dan said to Billy Tate.

  ‘A sore-throat player?’ Alice said.

  ‘And you set yourself up as a judge of dumbness?’ Roddy said.

  ‘He made people so excited, they shouted till their throats were sore,’ Billy Tate said.

  The waiter was dispensing more coffee and Matt Mason enjoyed the conjunction of his discreet, slightly sniffy presence and their raucous company. It was a reminder of where he had come from, which made where he had arrived all the more remarkable. He sensed the waiter’s discomfort and it pleased him. The large Rémy Martin in his hand glowed warmly, proof against anyone’s disapproval.

  He looked round at the motley band his money had assembled. In spite of the talent Billy Tate had found for himself and Dan Scoular and Frankie White, Margaret, Mason’s wife, was still the best-looking woman at the table. She usually was. She dressed well, he thought. She undressed well, too, and that was as much as he asked of her. He had his two sons, Matt and Eric, by his first wife, Anne. Anne’s death, just when he was beginning to make real money, had simplified his basic nature further and the last traces of his altruism had been buried with her. He paid for services rendered, that was all. It was the way he liked it. Margaret knew the rules and, in return for what she gave him, she had as much money as she needed and an easy life. His sons, who were at boarding school, were expected to repay the investment by what they made of their lives. Even tonight, he bought the meal and the drinks and the others performed, whether it was Frankie White and Billy Tate telling stories or Roddy and Alice doing their turn or the girls Billy had brought just looking decorative.

  The only one who didn’t fit was Dan Scoular, and that interested Matt Mason. He had been observing Dan throughout the evening. The big man had had one glass of red wine and, at Matt Mason’s suggestion, had been on Perrier water the rest of the time. The other two women Billy Tate had brought didn’t seem too pleased that it was Melanie who had been assigned to Dan. He was shining with health and his movements had the unblurred quality of the well trained, as if he moved in a less sluggish atmosphere than everybody else.

  He reminded Matt Mason of somewhere he had once been himself, a place of simple self-assurance where every day was a straight transaction with the world, before Mason had had to make a careful structure of his life, turn himself into an organisation. Mason felt closer to him than he did to anyone else at the table. Feeling the dynastic impulse that often comes with success, he was wondering if Dan Scoular might not be somebody he could bring into his organisation and train to be like himself. It wasn’t a selfless thought. He saw in Dan Scoular a force he wanted to acquire for, functioning naturally on its own terms, it contradicted him, suggesting another way he might have been, an alternative life he might have had. If he could absorb it, make it his own, it would reaffirm him, be a renewal of himself, like a monkey-gland injection.

  But it would be foolish to buy before testing the quality. The fight would decide for him. If Dan Scoular didn’t collapse but hardened in the glaze, Mason would know what he was getting. The casual signs tonight had been good, he thought. He liked the way Dan had handled himself. Unlike Frankie White, he had held himself a little apart from proceedings. Matt Mason liked that. Dan seemed quietly preoccupied. Melanie (Mason wondered what woman’s magazine had provided her with the name) was leaning towards him, her black hair swinging forward to blinker her from everybody at the table but him. Mason was about to tell her to keep that till after the fight when Dan rose and excused himself. Mason happened to glance at Frankie White, not meaning anything, and Frankie winked knowingly and followed Dan Scoular out. Matt Mason smiled to himself, feeling like someone who had nodded unconsciously in agreement with his own thoughts and found a waiter fussing round him attentively.

  Frankie White had gone past the pay-phone before he realised that was where Dan Scoular was. Frankie carried on into the toilet and waited a suitable time there. When he came back out, he saw that Dan was still on the phone and he became interested in the paintings in the foyer. Frankie didn’t know himself what purpose he was serving but he assumed his attentiveness would please Matt Mason. He felt the more keen to do that because of tonight.

  It had been the kind of occasion that could feed Frankie’s imagination for weeks. He had eaten expensive food and drunk expensive wine. He had been chatting casually on equal terms with Billy Tate. Sandra, the girl Billy had brought along for him, had promised to come back to his hotel room later, once he was sure that big Dan was safely in bed. The way a crust of bread could ravish an anchorite’s palate, these scraps of what Frankie took to be the good life were enough to sustain his lonely vision of himself as a man of consequence and success.

  He was still savouring his mood when he realised that Dan Scoular was standing beside him, staring at the big abstract painting Frankie had been using as a surface on which to project his thoughts. From the pain on Dan’s face, Frankie wondered if the painting was expressing something he had missed. But the glibness of the thought gave way to worry and the worry evoked Frankie’s reflex response to trouble: try to joke it away.

  ‘What is it, d’you think?’ he said, nodding at the painting.

  Dan said nothing.

  ‘Obvious, isn’t it?’ Frankie went on. ‘What we have here is blue and red and black paint in a gilt frame. If you’d been to art-appreciation classes like me, ye’d know that.’

  ‘Is this goin’ to take much longer in here?’ Dan asked as they walked back into the restaurant.

  The fact that Dan wasn’t enjoying the evening confirmed Frankie’s belief that some kind of crisis was imminent. Dan had obviously been phoning Thornbank. Something was wrong. As they came back to the table, the worry Frankie felt was in proportion to the width of his smile.

  By the evening of the following day, which was the Thursday before the fight, Frankie’s smile had festered into a grimace. Dan Scoular didn’t return from training. Frankie wondered if he had g
one to training at all. Preoccupied with Sandra, who had returned to the hotel room after lunch-time, Frankie hadn’t accompanied Dan to Ingram Street. Just before five he and Sandra had parted, vowing to make a career out of an idyll. Frankie hadn’t wanted Dan to catch them together, in case he got ideas, and then began to wish Dan had. By six o’clock annoyance was moving towards panic. Frankie found himself walking from his own room into Dan’s and back again, addressing windows and walls and faded carpet. ‘Come on, big man! You must be kidding.’ ‘Don’t do this to me.’ ‘If ye’ve blown this, big Dan, Ah’ll fight ye maself.’

  At half-past six Frankie went out and took a taxi to Ingram Street. The gymnasium was shut. Frankie was by this time not only talking to himself but arguing with himself, taking both sides of a complicated discussion. Part of him was saying Dan was in a pub. Another part was telling himself not to be ridiculous. But he looked in at several pubs around Ingram Street. He resented Dan for making him do that because, while he didn’t find Dan Scoular in any of the pubs, he saw reflections of himself, the way you sometimes see yourself accidentally in a shop window as you pass and have dismissed the image out of hand before you realise it’s you. Frankie spent a lot of his time alone in pubs, refurbishing his image of himself, and it was a little shocking to look in as a man preoccupied with the job he had to do and see other men doing what he recognised as one of his own favourite activities, and find it sad. For it was an hour that was too early for enjoyment. The men he saw on his quick tour were not there from choice but from compulsion. They were lingering at an oasis because a desert was ahead.