All the Colours of the Town

by McIlvanney, Liam

  *

  When the march was over we went to the Green – a stretch of parkland down by the river. The speeches had already started: a small man in a tight suit was talking sternly into a microphone on a platform draped with Union flags. Those nearest him nodded and clapped. You knew when to clap because he left a space. The Green looked like an encampment. The bandsmen had laid down their drums and flutes and were cracking open cans and bottles. The smell of fried onions carried from the food vans. Bannerettes were laid out on the grass, side by side, like the frames of a comic strip. Two toddlers in kilts were swordfighting with flutes. A man strolled between the groups, handing out little booklets. ‘Have You Met Your Redeemer?’ I stuck it in my back pocket. Three guys sitting on a Union flag were playing pontoons for matchsticks.

  At the far end of the meadow a kick-about was underway on the flat ground by the river: a fat man rushed to keep the ball out of the water and landed on his arse once he’d hooked it clear. His raised arm acknowledged his comrades’ cheers.

  People had brought flasks and tartan rugs, jumbo bottles of cider and fizzy juice, towers of plastic cups.

  I passed a family of five enjoying a full-scale picnic. The father had the coolbox open and was twisting a can of lager from its plastic loop when my shadow fell across him. He looked up, nodded hello, and held out the can; gave a no-worries shrug when I shook my head.

  I kept an eye out for Diane, but the field was thronged. Teenagers were necking behind the burger vans. A boy with stringy hair was puking into the river. I picked my way back through the fallen bodies. It was hot and sticky. I thought of the can of cold beer and wished I’d taken it.

  *

  At the Cross Keys Inn, a solitary barman skidded back and forth behind the counter, stretching to press the optics, squatting to snatch beer bottles from crates. He kept at least three taps in motion, flicking each one just before it overflowed. In between he plucked banknotes from fists and dropped change into palms. Compared to the barman the drinkers looked static. Jammed in tight, they could barely move. They turned their heads fractionally to slurp from pints or tear bites out of filled rolls. Up close, there was something camp about the bandsmen. It was the uniforms, the military cut twinned with toyshop colours – superhero reds and blues. They looked like pantomime soldiers, their jackets loud with piping, gold braid criss-crossing the chests, running in garrulous spirals round the cuffs.

  Filled rolls wrapped in cellophane were piled on the counter. Spilled beer formed muddy slicks on the brick-coloured lino. The smell was high: top notes of sweat and flatulence over the radical pub stink of slops and stale baccy, pish, disinfectant. I fought my way to the bar and held out a tenner. Ten minutes later, Mary Slessor still in hand, I needed to piss. I pushed back to the exit and joined the row of marchers lining the back wall. By the time I made it back, the place was starting to empty. Pints and whiskies were swilled and sunk and the bandsmen moved out, fastening collars and cuffs, pulling Glengarrys from their epaulettes.

  ‘Where’s the fire?’ I asked my neighbour.

  ‘It’s the return leg: they march back up to the kirk.’

  ‘You not marching yourself?’

  ‘No me.’ He added water to his whisky. ‘My job’s done.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘I’m a marshal, son. We bow out at this point, and they’re glad to see the back of us. Let the boys cut loose a bit. Do the blood-and-thunder stuff.’

  He seemed to think of something.

  ‘What’s yours, anyway?’

  He added my order to his own and the barman shouted, ‘Got it.’ He was rushing around as if the bar was still busy, though only the regulars were left – a few pensioners nursing tumblers of Bell’s, ponies of seventy shilling.

  ‘There you go, son.’

  ‘Good man.’

  ‘Frazer Macklin.’

  I shook his hand.

  ‘John.’

  ‘OK, John. You coming over?’

  I helped him carry the drinks.

  We joined the others, three men in dark suits at a corner table. They seemed unsurprised at my arrival, jerked their chins in tepid greeting as if I drank here every day. They had the bored, competent air of petty officials – ticket inspectors or shop stewards. Their sashes and white gloves were folded in two neat piles on the windowsill behind them. Without their regalia they seemed closer to the elderly regulars than to the departed bandsmen. They didn’t have much to say. One of them told an anecdote about his grandson and a pet shop. There was a half-hearted colloquy about Rangers’ latest transfer target.

  The man sitting across from me wore white training shoes. He saw me notice.

  ‘I’ve got bad feet,’ he said. ‘The Walk’s a killer.’

  I got a round in. They all drank heavy, except for one who was on Black-and-Tan. He looked at me queerly when I set it in front of him.

  ‘Is that not right?’

  ‘What? No, it’s fine, son. Spot on.’

  The barman aimed the remote and the racing came on, a close-up of galloping fetlocks swathed in white tape, then a long shot of the field.

  The Black-and-Tan man was staring: I could feel his gaze on the side of my face. Finally he leaned forward.

  ‘Do I know you, son? Are you a Brother?’

  I’d already clocked the signet ring, the compasses and square.

  ‘Naw.’

  ‘Do you work in IBM?’

  ‘I don’t, no.’

  ‘I’ve seen your face.’ He shook his head. ‘It’ll come to me.’

  Frazer went out for a smoke and when he came back we were still discussing the smoking ban. For the first time since I’d joined them, the Orangemen were animated. They came alive in the clamour to bad-mouth their new politicians, to bemoan the peerless nullity of the Parliament. The smoking ban was the least of it. An infringement of civil liberties, said one of them. The thin end of the wedge. They spoke about creeping totalitarianism, the need for constant vigilance.

  ‘That’s right. One day you cannae spark up a Regal; the next it’s popery and wooden shoes.’

  ‘That’s no funny, son.’

  Everyone slags the Parliament: it’s a staple of bus-stop small talk, like the weather or the state of Scottish football. But the Orangemen had their own slant, their own angle of grievance.

  ‘Have you seen the names?’ said the man with the training shoes. ‘Fucking Kellys and Connollys and Maguires and fuck knows what. Scottish Labour Party? Scottish Sinn Fein.’

  ‘Behave yourself, Turner.’

  ‘Home Rule is Rome Rule. We said it all along, and guess what? It’s true.’

  ‘Yeah, but they’re no all like that,’ I said.

  Turner shrugged.

  ‘This was Lyons’s lodge, wasn’t it?’

  ‘What’s that, son?’

  ‘Peter Lyons.’

  Nobody spoke. Finally Frazer peered into his half-pint glass, swirling an inch of seventy.

  ‘It’s a long time since Peter Lyons threw a stick.’

  ‘But did you know him then? What was he like? Was he a good Orangeman?’

  ‘Of course I knew him. He was a bloody good drum major, that’s what he was.’

  The others nodded.

  ‘The best,’ said Turner.

  ‘So what happened?’ I looked round the faces. ‘Why did he leave?’

  ‘He sold the jerseys,’ said Black-and-Tan. ‘He wanted his name on election posters. He wanted a red rosette and his picture in the papers. He knew the comrades wouldnae wear it, the selection committees, what have you.’

  ‘Yeah, but you never really lose it, do you?’ Frazer tapped on the tabletop. ‘He’ll always be an Orangeman.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself, Brother.’

  ‘I’m not kidding. I’ll tell you one thing. I remember his face when he led the band, the look in his eyes when he brought the boys down that High Street. I don’t care what he does, I don’t care if he becomes prime minister, the bloody Pope, he’l
l never get a feeling the like of that.’

  ‘Do you never see him any more?’ I said. ‘Does he never come down, for the Twelfth?’

  Frazer set the empty glass on the table.

  ‘Why’nt you ask him.’ He nodded at an old boy sitting at the bar. ‘That’s his faither.’

  We all looked across. The old man rose to his feet and edged out from behind his table. I thought at first he had heard us and was leaving, but he walked past the exit, heading for the lavatory. Then the barman had his arm out, pointing across the pub:

  ‘That’ll do you, girls. Not another step.’

  Three lassies in short skirts and heavy eye make-up stood just inside the door. Diane was the leader. She held up a card, brandished it like a referee.

  ‘What’s this look like? You cannae bar us, mister. We’re eighteen. We’ve got ID.’

  ‘It’s your bus pass, hen. You’re no coming in.’

  He was out from behind the bar now, approaching with outstretched arms, shooing them out.

  Diane looked around.

  ‘Hey, Gerry! There’s Gerry. Tell him, Gerry. We’re eighteen. Tell him.’

  ‘Out.’

  The door swung shut on their protests. The barman stayed where he was, making no move to go back to the bar.

  Black-and-Tan was nodding. He reached for his drink and then stopped.

  ‘You’re Gerry Conway. I fucking knew I knew you.’

  ‘Who’s Gerry Conway?’

  ‘He writes for the Trib. You write for the Tribune.’

  ‘You’re a journalist?’

  I nodded.

  The man who was Peter Lyons’s dad had come back from the toilet now and he too stopped, waited for what would happen.

  There was a long, slack moment of silence, during which I studied the scuffs on the lino and Turner’s incongruous training shoes, and then the breeze was cool on my face, lifting my fringe.

  The barman was holding the door and the others had got to their feet.

  ‘Time you werenae here, son.’

  *

  I couldn’t find the car. I walked from one end of the wasteground to the other. More than ever, it looked like a football match; all the buses in a row, Rangers placards in their windows: Garscube Loyal; Tradeston True Blues. Then I turned a corner and there it was.

  The parade had finished: the pavements were filling up once more, as bandsmen and marchers went back to their coaches. I inched through the streets, stop-starting, gently beeping the pedestrians. I wanted out before the streets clogged altogether, and I turned, without proper attention, onto the High Street. Straight off I clocked it: the blue disc, the white arrow, pointing the wrong way. Shit. I looked for a side street, but they were thick with bodies, the crowds spilling into the thoroughfare. Fuck. I threw the car into reverse and swung round.

  At first I thought I’d hit someone: shouts of protest sounded from the rear. Something banged on the roof. A hand appeared beside me making the ‘wanker’ gesture – no; he wanted me to roll down the window. No chance: I shook my head. He jabbed his finger at me, then at the ‘One Way Street’ sign. I know; I nodded. The crowd was thick on either side now, the car stuck sideways across the white line.

  Two middle-aged guys stepped round the bonnet, and one of them paused: the Cross Keys guy, the Black-and-Tan drinker. He grabbed the other’s sleeve and pointed. The second man turned, gestured to someone behind him.

  I leaned on the horn; the sound was thin and somehow effete. It brought more onlookers round the car. I revved the engine but nobody moved. Black-and-Tan stayed out in front with his palms on the bonnet, as if waiting to be frisked. His eyes were dull with drink.

  Pointlessly, as if a winking yellow light would bring everyone to their senses, I applied the left indicator.

  A gob splattered the windscreen. Someone was trying the door. There was an icy tinkle, barely audible, that I knew was a headlight breaking.

  My bag was on the passenger seat: I scrabbled in the side pocket, fingers paddling for my phone. More spit slid down the glass. The banging on the roof started up once again. I saw a man lean backwards to give himself room, and a shoe sole the size of a suitcase came pistoning towards me.

  I found the phone.

  As I thumbed the buttons a different noise cut through the hubbub, a thin slicing sound, hissing at the window. I craned round. For a moment the whole scene – the jostling bodies, the opening mouths – had a barley-sugar tinge, an orangey film, and I was back in my childhood sickbed, viewing the world through the cellophane wrapper of a Lucozade bottle. Then the window cleared and a brown cock jiggled comically for a second before flipping into a waistband.

  The cabin darkened: someone was up there, blocking the sunroof. Then he was down again and my ear was hurt, stinging, as if something had struck it. My bag thudded down from the passenger seat and the mobile jumped out of my hand. The glove compartment slumped open and my CDs skittered out. Through the front windscreen the sun was swinging into my eyes and out again, like a torch clicking on and off.

  They were rocking the car.

  Three or four bodies on either side, working together, hitting a rhythm. Each time the car rocked to the right, the window thumped into my ear. I braced my right arm on the door frame and gripped the handbrake with my left. The windscreen kept pitching like a boat on heavy seas, a little steeper with each new heave. Then the sun flared in my side window, not the front, and I was rising, floating, suspended in air as the car tipped onto its fulcrum.

  Even then, as a rhombus of blue sky paused in the window, and a vast protracted second gave me all the time in the world to review my situation, I didn’t feel afraid. That I might be seriously hurt, in a small town in Lanarkshire, on a sunny weekend afternoon, by a crowd of militant Calvinists in blue suits and sashes, seemed – even then – unrealistic. How serious were these people? How angry? I don’t think they themselves were sure. Had something happened, had the car tipped over and the windows shattered, with shards and splinters and blood on the roadway, they might have claimed it as a joke, a prank, a piece of wayward fun. And they might have been right. At that point things could have gone either way.

  Then the chassis was bouncing with the shock of impact and ironic cheers greeted my landing.

  I waited for the rocking to start again but the bodies had moved away, the cabin suddenly bright, and a policeman’s face – incredulous, angry – loomed at my elbow. He rapped on the window.

  Out front another cop – arms spread wide in a green fluorescent jacket – was moving back the crowd. A blue light whirled mutely from a squad car.

  I pressed the button.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ He glanced round the cabin as if hoping to spot whatever had riled the crowd. ‘Right. Let’s get you out of this. Stick close to us. All right? We’ll take you the Uddingston road.’

  The window scrolled up.

  I put the car in gear and eased round. The squad car pulled off. The crowd closed behind me, raising its noise.

  On the motorway, once the cops had taken the exit and I merged back into the city-bound flow, I still felt shaken. The backs of my arms prickled with shame. The rocking of the car hadn’t bothered me. It was the slow drive down Crosskirk High Street, the hard laughter of the crowd. The street had seemed to go on for ever. At one point, when the cop car braked without warning, I stalled. The crowd hooted and cheered. I saw the camera phones, the hands cupped around shouting mouths. For a second I was lost, I no longer knew how to drive a car. Then I closed my eyes and opened them, talked myself through it: turn the key; find first gear. I followed the Land Rover’s bumper down that hostile mile, beneath loops of coloured bunting. It felt like an expulsion, the town purging my unclean presence. I wasn’t the victim but the culprit, the scapegoat, the treacherous Lundy.

  The faces stayed with me, on the drive back to Glasgow, and the smirking grins on Crosskirk High Street meshed with those in the photo o
f Lyons. These were Lyons’s people, this was his hinterland. This is where he preened and swaggered, tossing his stupid stick. Suddenly I was rooting in my pocket, yanking out my phone. I stopped in a lay-by and punched the number.

  ‘Norman Rix.’

  ‘I’ll need a week,’ I told him. ‘I’m going to Belfast.’

  Book Two

  Chapter Six

  What Gordon Orchardton had told me in his gleaming conservatory, when he leaned to switch the Dictaphone off and turned his back on the blue Garnock hills, was this. There was a time in the early eighties, Orchardton said, when Lyons was in Belfast every month. Things were happening then, and Lyons was close to the action. He had contacts. Names were never mentioned, but you got the idea that these were the high-ups. The top boys. Lyons never let on. This was the whole UVF thing, said Orchardton. You never spilled. The UDA were different, they sat in pubs and flapped their lips, talking large about things they’d never done. But the Blacknecks were tight, Blacknecks never talked. You never knew for certain who was in it and who wasn’t.

  But then something happened. There was a rift, a falling out, between Lyons and the guys on the other side. Lyons came back in a hurry. It was Guy Fawkes Night, 1983. Bangers and firecrackers snapping in the street, rockets whistling up in the dark and crackling in green-and-purple bursts. That’s how he remembers the date: Lyons was upset, agitated – he jumped at every bang and muffled crump, perched there on Orchardton’s sofa, his big hands clamped round a mug of toddy.

  ‘I’d never seen him like that,’ Orchardton told me. ‘Peter Lyons is a big strong man. But that night he was beat; he was a whipped dug. The guy was scared. He came straight to mine’s off the ferry. Still had his holdall. He was shaking like stink, really chittering. Like he couldnae get warm. “That’s me,” he kept saying. “I’m finished. I’m bye with it.” Shaking his head and staring into his mug: “Bye with it.” Blackneck to the last but.’ Orchardton smiled. ‘Wouldnae tell me what was wrong. But something had happened. Somebody’d put the frighteners on him. Somebody daunted him. There were no marks on him that I could see but I think they fucked him over.’ He looked at me and nodded. ‘Yeah. I think they gave him a seeing-to. And maybe something worse. Or else the threat of it. And that was him. He never crossed the water again.’