All the Colours of the Town

by McIlvanney, Liam

  Lyons’s phone jiggled on the tablecloth, like a beetle trying to right itself. He opened it, checked the number, and closed it again.

  ‘How’s Norman?’

  A smile was already snagging his lips. He loved to hear Rix getting slagged.

  ‘Rix? The Englishman abroad?’ A vegetable smell – asparagus? fennel? – rose from the table behind. I hadn’t realised I was hungry till the waiter passed us over. The bread basket was empty.

  ‘Stormin’ Norman. He’s, like, the worst news we’ve ever carried. This sentimental cynicism. He’s a fucking zealot. I’m right and you’re all wrong. Doesn’t matter the numbers don’t back him.’ I looked over Lyons’s shoulder; a head flashed past the porthole in the kitchen door. ‘In a month or two he’ll be flying round the Quay, handing folk their cards. He’ll still be wrong, but the numbers’ll look better.’

  ‘Heavy weather, eh? The new regime.’

  ‘What can you do? They don’t last for ever.’

  ‘You said it.’ He was smiling.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m saying nothing.’

  His smile wouldn’t be quelled. Even when he frowned at the tablecloth it kept springing back.

  ‘MacLaren?’

  He rolled his eyes innocently.

  ‘You mean, you wish?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head briskly. ‘No, he told me himself. He doesn’t want to fight the next election. He’s standing down next month. He wants to announce it at conference.’

  ‘Why? What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. His wife’s ill. He’s had enough. He wants to spend more time on Mull. He’s nearly sixty, Gerry. He’s by with it.’

  I sighed. ‘Tch. And no one waiting to fill the breach.’

  He grinned. The waiter was back and this time it was us. He set the plates down and the warm bland reek of the tatties rose with the uriney tang of the fish.

  ‘Who else has it?’

  I had my notebook out once more. He put down the salt and swept his hand towards me in a showman’s flourish.

  ‘For real?’

  ‘Would I trust such an item to anyone else? Only, don’t sit on it; if he’s told me, you know?’

  I lifted my knife and fork. The waiter was back again, with a peppermill the size of a rifle. He presented it to Lyons, gave its base three sharp twists and then clutched it diagonally to his chest. I waved him away.

  ‘By the by, Gerry, the photo? The one you used last time? Desperate. I’ll get Bryce to send one over.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Leave the big shots, Eric told me. Eric Aitken, this was. My first week at the Tribune. Don’t waste your time. The leaders, the lieutenants. They’ll only spill what suits them. Look to the new ones, the up-and-comers. It’s like the cuddies, he said. Study the field. Pick out a couple. Cultivate them. Take them to lunch, slip their names into your copy, talk them up a little. When they rise, they take you with them.

  He was right. The only advice I was ever offered, and I took it. And I chose well. Not the others, maybe, not the two or three rookies I’d coaxed and flattered, but Lyons, whom I’d rated from the start. It was pure luck. I caught him at the City Halls, at the start of the referendum campaign. It was a yes-camp rally: ‘Scotland United’. He took the stage like a boxer, his big shoulders rolling, and faced the mike. Nobody knew him. But he frowned out into the crowd and started to talk. The big flat hand – chop, chop – falling in time with the words. He had the trick of rhythm, starting low and calm and then throwing out phrases, beating the air with his hand, till he signed off on a strong indignant quiver. As he built to each crescendo the hand fell faster, till it seemed he was chopping a log, and then the log gave way in a crash of applause. His hair was longer then, a swart pelt, and with every juddering salvo his fringe worked loose, till it dropped across his eyes and he forced it back with a swipe of his paw.

  When he finished, when he left the stage to the stamping of feet, his plum shirt black and a long damp leaf up the seam of his jacket, I was waiting at the stairs, my card between two fingers. We ate lunch the next day. For the rest of the campaign I looked out for him. He wasn’t around much. I caught him at a hustings in Ayrshire. He spoke from an open-top bus in George Square. And then I saw him at the count in Edinburgh, before the big screen with a Coke in his hand, raising his glass as the votes thumped home.

  And then he just vanished. Not vanished, exactly, but he dropped out of sight. He’d been promised the nomination to one of the Glasgow seats, and when this didn’t happen he took it badly. For four years no one saw him. And then he was back, elected on the Glasgow list, rising in Holyrood to give his maiden speech. The speech was special. It had none of the rancour, none of the field-preacher cadences of the referendum tour. He was witty, dry; nervous at first, you could see that, but enjoying himself, in full control. He spoke without notes, in a courtroom style, swinging round suddenly and pointing his finger, spreading his arms in cajoling appeal. His voice carried, an educated baritone, dropping an octave for prickly little asides in Glasgow Scots. Afterwards, in the Garden Lobby, everyone pouted and shrugged, leafed through their press-packs. But the hacks were stirred, skittish as horses, tossing their heads as they kept an eye on the members’ door. I listened to the talk and kept my mouth shut. And that Sunday we ran a profile, a full page with quotes from his law-firm partners and wry reminiscences from primary teachers.

  He was holding the bottle now, tipping it towards me.

  He’s missed the boat, I had thought, when he lost the nomination. But watching him now, I could see it had made him, the four-year delay. It looked like precision timing. By the time he got elected, the country was yearning for someone like Lyons. The new dispensation had waned. The promise had dimmed, the lustre dulled, and here came Peter Lyons, with his rational charm, his chat-show eloquence, his Mafioso neckties. Peter Lyons, who was new, untarnished, and yet a link with the old brave days, the calendar of hope.

  I put my hand over the glass.

  ‘It’s only going to waste.’ Lyons waggled the bottle.

  ‘They can put it in the gamberoni,’ I said. The second glass had made me sleepy. Already the thought of the office was turning sour, like the first twinge of a headache.

  ‘Anyway, we’re not all demob happy. Some of us have our work to go to.’

  ‘Yeah?’ The bottle clanked as Lyons set it down. ‘It seems to me I’ve just about done your work. I’ve just about sorted you out. Or is that not right?’

  He was nettled. I’d only meant to josh him, find a tactful way of declining the wine. But his face was dark now, with sullen bumps below his mouth.

  The glass wobbled as I pushed it to the centre of the table.

  ‘Yeah, you’re right. It’s only three thousand words, Peter. It writes itself.’

  ‘Bryce’ll send you the quotes.’ He was smiling again. ‘Drop him an email. He’ll send them over. You string them together; top and tail.’ He laughed. He leaned forward, telling me a secret. ‘Nobody reads it all the way through, Gerry.’ He leaned back, raised his hand for the check.

  His smile failed as the money fluttered down. Two twenties and a ten.

  ‘That cover it?’ I put my wallet back in my pocket.

  ‘Gerry. Gerry.’ He caught my sleeve as I negotiated the tight table, chairs squealing on the tiles. ‘I’m kidding, all right? I’m kidding. Jesus. Touchy, Gerry.’ He clapped his shoulder. ‘Sit down for Christ’s sake. You’re worse than MacLaren. Come on, Gerry. You know what I think of you. You know I rate you. Did I help out a wee bit? Did I help things along a little?’

  What could I say? I shrugged. A waiter was waiting to get past; he stood before me with three desserts balanced on his arm; a tiramisu and two elaborate ice-cream structures. I sat down.

  ‘That’s all I’m saying then.’ He folded the banknotes, lodged them in the pocket of my shirt. ‘That’s all I’m saying.’

  The waiter squeezed between the tables, twisting his hips like a matado
r.

  We ordered coffee and talked about nothing; Party gossip; Celtic-and-Rangers. At one point the lights went out and a fizzing, orange ball wavered into view, and a man’s reddened features, savage in the ruddy glow. Then the music started and everyone joined in, craning round to see. Lyons was beaming. The voices thinned when it came to the name – Timmy, it might have been, or Cammy or Terry – and then we all rallied round on the final line. The kid’s round mouth raked the conflagration – there were sparklers in there, and four or five candles – and everyone clapped as the lights came back on.

  ‘How’s your own two?’ he asked. ‘Ricky and James?’

  ‘Roddy. They’re great. I’m taking them up the coast next week. Carradale.’

  ‘Nice.’

  Lyons’s phone rang again.

  ‘Do you mind?’ The phone perched on his outstretched palm, open, like a black plastic bird. ‘I sort of need to take this.’

  ‘On you go.’ I needed a piss in any case.

  When I got back Lyons was signing a napkin for the toothy woman.

  I called for the check.

  At the birthday table the kid was sulking, his chin deep down between the wings of his polo shirt. As his dad leaned in close, the boy flinched, hunching his shoulders as if he was cold, as if his clothes were suddenly wet. I could hear the dad’s tone, coaxing and low – a tone that the kid himself would come to master, the tone of a man letting somebody down.

  The waiter arrived with the check and presented it to Lyons.

  *

  The street was cooler now – a breeze had come up off the river – and as we strolled towards George Square the tension between us passed, as if the restaurant were to blame, its enervating cramped formality, and here in the open air we were easy as ever.

  Lyons stopped to light a torpedo; the flame flapped whitely, twice, like a butterfly’s wings, as he sucked and puffed and got it to draw. A great white cloud plumed skywards.

  ‘Oh yes.’ He shook his head. ‘Smoking ban. Fucking politicians. Listen, Gerry.’

  ‘What?’

  We paused at a junction.

  ‘About the wine. Back there. It was stupid; I should have thought.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It never occurred to me. I’m sorry.’

  We stood at the kerb. A bus rolled through the junction, its fumes blue in the afternoon sun. I’d been in rehab, briefly, a year or so back – there were alcohol issues after the split – but I didn’t see how Lyons could know this. I was about to ask him what he meant when the signal changed and the crowd pressed forward. On the far pavement a man in a red wooden booth called ‘Evening Times’ in a stylised bark. Lyons strode ahead, his free hand rooting for change. A backdraught of smoke gusted into my face and the two things – the smoke and the bright hot sun – pitched me back a quarter-century. Sunlit water on wooden planks. I’m in the Howard Park, half in and half out of the gloom beneath the footbridge, reclining on the earthen bank. I’m eleven years old, smoking a Regal King Size and the petty, tea-dark river is majestic with light; its reflection sways on the planks of the bridge, crossing and twisting like ropes of shadow-glass. I watch the pattern through half-shut eyes, through smoke and sunlight, sleepy and alert.

  ‘Here.’

  I opened my eyes. Lyons was poking me in the belly with a rolled-up Times.

  ‘Phone Bryce. And Gerry? See it gets a good show.’

  He was off down Argyle Street, heading for Queen Street Station. He walked on, slapping his leg with the Times, then turned to wave, his hand cresting a sun-shot fug of blue cigar smoke.

  I turned back towards the East End. At the Cross, I turned down the Saltmarket, keeping to the shady side. I could feel the notebook in my pocket as I walked, its discrete weight, as if the MacLaren story was rippling its pages, the kinetic gravity of news. It felt good to have a story again – not a sloppy wodge of comment but a hard bright newsy nugget. A scoop. I could see their faces already – Rix and Moir and Fiona Maguire; the spreading smiles as I broke the news.

  I passed the High Court with its sinister columns. Banker Bill MacLaren was jacking it in: that in itself was a splash. But the real news, the big, billowing indistinct story, was just edging into view. Lyons as First Minister: I had backed the right horse there. But then Lyons as Loyalist conspirator. The First Minister-in-Waiting and a nest of paramilitaries. Who were the New Covenanters? A complete run of Rathlin had told me precious little. I knew who old ones were, the martyrs and saints of the Covenant: hardline Presbyterians who fought the British state. They wouldn’t have bishops. They worshipped in the open air, on rough bits of moorland, with armed sentries guarding the faithful. The redcoats chased them through barren glens, coursed them like deer in the late sixteen-hundreds. They were shot and hanged in the ‘Killing Time’. But who were their namesakes, the New Covenanters? I would have to turn redcoat myself – Trooper Conway – and run them to earth.

  The sun hammered down on the High Court steps. On Glasgow Green the grass was thick with bodies, couples reclining on jackets, clerks and junior counsels with their Marks and Spencer sandwiches. Two boys with squeezy bottles were chasing in and out of the bushes. Their laughter issued in fluent spurts. As they passed me, the boy in front turned and planted his feet, squaring off to his onrushing foe. But his bottle was empty; it wheezed hoarsely as he pumped it with both thumbs. His laughter scaled up to a choking joyful shriek as the other kid drenched him, waving his bottle from side to side, the water fizzing on the laughing boy’s chest. Then the victor turned his bottle skywards, and sent a thick jet skooshing high in the air, a glistering arch that hung a moment in the sun.

  Chapter Four

  Two days later I was on the train to Irvine. The carriage was almost empty. Then, two minutes before departure, in they pushed, seven flushed roustabouts, heading home from Aberdeen, wedging holdalls into the luggage racks and squeezing round adjacent tables, bursting the cellophane on a slab of lager, seven ring-pulls hissing in gaseous syncopation. I closed my paperback, slipped it in the seat pocket.

  You had to wonder how much Lyons knew. Should I have sprung it on him, I wondered, back in Ferrante’s? Pulled the photo from my briefcase and slapped it on the table? That had been the plan. But every moment, as we talked, I was sure he was about to spill. He had to know; that was why he called me, that was why he was acting how he was; that strange excitement, a kind of girlish tizz. But then he mentioned MacLaren and I knew he wasn’t spooked at all, he was high, exultant at the top job suddenly swinging into reach. By then, of course, the moment had passed. And anyway, the MacLaren angle altered things. Lyons as First Minister? This was a whole new scale of story now. I would have to think it through, decide how to play it. So the briefcase stayed shut.

  A station flashed past, too fast for me to read the sign. The oilmen were quieter now, their cropped heads swaying above the sports reports. A kid had started babbling at the far end of the carriage, a forthright, oriental-sounding harangue that sang out with startling purity in the mid-journey lull. The sounds were raw and unformed, but the tone was comically definite and swung abruptly from the plaintive to the bitterly indignant and then on to a sunny sing-song equanimity.

  One of the oilmen turned a page and then nudged his mate across the aisle.

  ‘That wean’s making more sense than you were on Friday night.’

  His pal looked up from his paper, cocked his head.

  ‘Hi, the state I was in on Friday night, I’d’ve understood that wean. Me and him would have hit it right off.’

  They bent to their match reports. I thought of a morning, a year or two back, when James was still a toddler. He’d been in his room and had heard me climbing the stairs. It was a sunny morning, the upstairs landing a buttery haze. He stood in his doorway and roared, gently, like a secretive lion when I came into view at the top of the stairs. I roared back. He roared again, louder, an extended version, the original roar with a little curlicue, and he laughed aloud when I did it rig
ht back. We stood there for the next few minutes, tossing this roar back and forth, shaping and twisting it, putting in growls and little crescendos. Sometimes Jamie would introduce the new element, and sometimes I would. In the end I could hardly roar for laughing, not at the humour of the thing but out of sheer ecstatic joy, this spell of blissful concord with my son. Enjoy it, I remember thinking; this is as good as it gets. I knew then that no conversation, no mere exchange of words, would top this festival of roaring on the upstairs landing.

  At Irvine I took a cab from the rank outside the station. From the driver’s narrowed eyes in the rear-view I guessed that Orchardton’s wasn’t the best of addresses. But the driver said nothing, just lodged his Sun behind the sun-visor, found first and pulled out into the sparse, pre-rush-hour traffic.

  I’d phoned Orchardton the night before. There were nine Orchardtons in the Glasgow directory. None of them was him but the seventh – a spry-sounding biddy on Maryhill Road – turned out to be his second cousin. She put me through the wringer a bit but finally she gave me the number. I went online and found the address. I thought of turning up blind but I didn’t fancy a wasted trip. When I explained who I was, Gordon Orchardton was polite but chary. I told him I was researching a feature article on Ulster–Scottish connections. Our talk would be confidential, and real names wouldn’t be used. He gave me directions from Irvine Station, told me he’d expect me at four.

  It was five to four now. I braced my arm on the door as the cab leaned into the curve. We were skirting a housing scheme, long grey lines of corporation semis. That morning’s rain had left dark shapes on the gable ends, like urine stains on grey school trousers. I looked out for the acronyms, the spray-gunned logos, since this was an arterial route, a boundary line. A posse would be headquartered here, a Young Team with this street in its name.

  The cab swung right and then left, nosing deeper into the scheme. The streets were neater here, well-tended crescents with close-cropped hedges, the houses finished in white instead of grey. It looked like the street where my gran used to live, in a ‘good’ council scheme with a long waiting list. As a kid I spent most Sundays there. One of the neighbours had a boy my age, and we’d play for hours, stroking a football back and forth beneath the ‘No Ball Games’ sign on the crescent’s central disc of turf. It seemed a safe place to me then, happy – the pensioners walking their terriers, the houses with their wedding-cake walls. A world of local newspapers and corner shops, where all the front doors were exactly the same. Then Thatcher got in and everything changed. Suddenly the doors were different – they were bright-blue or scarlet instead of dark-green, or they were fancy panelled affairs from the home-improvement centres. This was what you did when you bought your council house: you changed the front door, because now you could.