Just Duffy

by Robin Jenkins

‘They can’t be disturbed, Mick. They’re just maggots and bones.’

  ‘What about their souls?’

  He had seen too many horror films.

  Duffy and Crosbie had succeeded. Some dunts had loosened the catch. Though the window was narrow it was close enough to the ground for them to be able to squeeze through easily, except for Dykes whose difficulty was caused not so much by his bulk as by his being paralysed with superstitious fear. Cooley felt him. He was as rigid as a corpse. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t even chew.

  She felt sorry for him, especially as Crosbie was in a state of ghoulish delight. ‘You’ll be safer in the church, Mick; well, warmer anyway.’

  They went through the vestry. By the light of Duffy’s torch they saw the minister’s black gown hanging from a peg. Crosbie put it on and began to snuffle through his nose in an imitation of Mr Cargill. Cooley couldn’t help laughing. Mick though was appalled and showed it by trying to speak, like Frankenstein’s monster.

  As she went into the vast creaking church Cooley wished there was something she could do to excuse the intrusion and propitiate God if He happened to be there, hiding behind one of the great stone pillars. If she had been a Catholic she could have crossed herself. All she could think of was to put her fingers to her nose. It wasn’t intended as a gesture of impudent defiance, though Mr Cargill and his parishioners would have seen it as such.

  While Crosbie held his torch, Duffy, kneeling on the stone floor, unwrapped and opened the tin. As if it had contained myrrh, whatever myrrh was, he spooned portions into the four cups.

  ‘Jesus!’ Cooley held Mrs Duffy’s handkerchief, soaked in scent, to her nose. She made up her mind to take no further part.

  Like someone assisting a priest, Crosbie, in the black gown, came and handed Mick his cupful and spoon.

  Cooley refused to take hers. ‘Count me out. I’m going to be sick.’

  ‘Duffy said you’d to take it.’

  ‘Duffy can go to hell.’

  He cried: ‘Duffy, she’ll not take it.’

  Duffy came up to her. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘My stomach’s turning, that’s what’s wrong. You wouldn’t ask Margaret Porteous to do this, would you?’

  ‘Why did you come?’

  Because I thought I could protect you, you nutter, she yelled within, and because I need that ten pounds. Outwardly she mumbled, through the handkerchief: ‘I said I’d come but I didn’t say I would play with shit. I stopped doing that when I was a year old.’

  ‘We are not playing. This is war.’

  ‘Balls!’

  ‘In war the penalty for refusing an order is death.’

  She looked closer to see if he was joking. He certainly wasn’t grinning from ear to ear. ‘You’re an idiot, Duffy.’

  ‘Johnny, have you got your knife handy?’

  ‘Sure, Duffy.’ Crosbie had it out in a flash. It glittered like his eyes.

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ she said.

  She got ready to knee Crosbie in the goolies as hard as she could.

  The knife was almost touching her throat.

  ‘You’re going too far, Duffy,’ she said.

  ‘All you have to do is to say you will obey orders.’

  ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’

  ‘Duffy’s the leader,’ said Crosbie, giggling.

  ‘Mick, aren’t you going to do something?’ she asked.

  But Mick, all his bounce and brag gone, was no help.

  ‘All right,’ she said, giving in, not because she was afraid but because she wanted that ten pounds.

  Duffy then demonstrated. He opened a hymn-book at random and put a small spot between the pages. Cooley was reminded of a Catholic friend of her childhood, Bridget Flanagan, who every Ash Wednesday had had ash daubed on her brow.

  ‘Just that much?’ asked Crosbie, disappointed. ‘They’ll never notice it.’

  ‘And it’ll take hours,’ said Cooley.

  She made up her mind then to bring some sense into the proceedings, or at any rate what would look like sense by comparison. ‘Why not just pick a dozen or so of the worst bastards and make a decent job of their hymn-books? It wouldn’t take long and it’d certainly be noticed. Porteous, to begin with. Milne. The minister. Rob Roy.’ Mr McGregor was headmaster of the High School. ‘Big Bella.’ Miss Isabel McKenzie was senior woman adviser. ‘Chalmers, the Fiscal. Guthrie, the lawyer. Councillor Grant who says school-leavers that can’t get jobs should be put in the Army. That’s eight. I’m sure they’re all members of this church. Maybe you can think of two or three others.’

  ‘Chief-Inspector Findlay is head of the police in Lightburn,’ said Duffy. ‘He is a member of the church.’

  ‘So’s Martin that owns the furniture shop,’ she said. He was also David’s father and had blamed Cooley for giving his son the pox when it had been the other way round. ‘He’s also in the Rotary.’

  ‘Dr Telfer,’ said Crosbie. ‘He told my dad I just pretended to have headaches.’

  ‘Do you?’ asked Cooley.

  ‘No, I don’t. Sometimes I can’t stand the pain. Ask Mick.’

  ‘If I asked Mick his name he couldn’t tell me.’

  ‘What about Teuchter?’

  ‘Teuchter’s all right for a cop, and he’s got a nice wife. Anyway he belongs to the Free Church.’

  It had no steeple, no Cross, and no stained glass windows. Visitors to the town often mistook it for a warehouse.

  ‘Let’s get started,’ she said. ‘Maybe we’ll think of somebody else.’

  She felt relieved. It was now a more or less straightforward, though still disgusting, act of revenge against some of the most conceited and snobbish people in the town. There was no nonsense about symbolical. It wouldn’t make them more humble and less hypocritical. It would make them furious. Their self-esteem would get a shock though, especially if it became a joke in the town, like the painting of Burns’s statue.

  It was easy enough tracking down the hymn-books, for to every pew in the front rows was affixed a card on which were typed the names of its occupants. There was no hymn-book with Mr Martin’s name on it but there were two with his wife’s name on them: both of these were liberally spread with the foul-smelling jam. Handkerchief at nose, Cooley did not do any of the anointing herself – the word kept occurring to her – but left it to Crosbie and Duffy and, in the case of Mrs Porteous’s hymn-book, Mick. She found herself laughing, a little hysterically, as she watched Mick plastering on the filth with loving care. Mrs Porteous’s was the fanciest hymn-book there. Bound in a dark-blue velvety cloth it had an inscription in it: ‘To my darling Elizabeth. John.’

  Last to be given the treatment was the minister’s big Bible, up in the pulpit. Crosbie offered to do it but Duffy wanted to do it himself. He did not immediately come down but remained for two or three minutes. He looked as if he was praying.

  She had never felt more impatient with him. He was no more a mystery than she was or Mick or Crosbie. It was all put on. Though she wasn’t yet seventeen she had long ago learned that people were easy to understand so long as you kept in mind that in everything they did they were seeking their own advantage. They tried to disguise their selfishness in a great variety of ways, Porteous for instance by appearing to be charitable and Councillor Grant by professing to be patriotic. Duffy was no different. This war of his was in revenge for his having no father, for not having done well at school, for not living in a villa, for not having Margaret Porteous as his girl-friend, and most recently for having been rejected by Mrs Porteous. All his talk about showing up hypocrisy and making people face the truth was baloney.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Duffy,’ she shouted, ‘we’re in a hurry to get away. This place stinks.’

  Five minutes later they were out in the fresh air again, and never had it smelled fresher. Cooley wiped her hands on the wet grass. The angel had looked after her bag faithfully. ‘Thanks,’ she said, as she took it down. She really did feel grate
ful. The nightmare was over. In an hour or so she would be on a bus for Glasgow.

  Duffy was clutching the biscuit tin. In it were the soiled spoons and cups.

  ‘You’d better get rid of that,’ she said. ‘If the cops stopped you they’d want to see what was in it. Wouldn’t they get a surprise.’

  ‘She’s right, Duffy,’ said Mick, who was recovering now that he was out of the church. ‘They stopped me last week and made me show them it was fish suppers I was carrying. They stole some chips.’

  ‘Toss it over the wall,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll do it, Duffy.’ Crosbie ran with it among the graves to the high stone wall beyond which was a wood.

  They crept towards the gates. There they paused under a large yew-tree. Duffy was subdued. Cooley had to take command.

  ‘We’d better go one at a time,’ she said. ‘Patrol cars often come along this avenue, looking after the property of the toffs. You go first, Mick. Give Annie my regards.’

  ‘O.K.’

  ‘I might never see you again, Mick, so look after yourself. I hope your dick grows another two inches at least.’

  He wasn’t sure how to take that. ‘I’ll remind Molly she’s to go and see you tomorrow night, Duffy.’

  ‘I don’t think she’ll need reminding,’ said Cooley.

  They watched Mick creep out of the gates and along the avenue.

  ‘Will he go to Annie’s?’ asked Cooley.

  ‘He’ll have to wait in the coal-cellar,’ said Crosbie. ‘Men visit her on Saturday nights. They bring her drink and pay her money. Mick’s got to wait till they’ve gone.’

  ‘She’s just a fat whure.’

  ‘Everybody knows about her and Mick except Mick’s mother. They’re frightened to tell her in case she kills Mick.’

  ‘I expect you’ll tell her yourself, Johnny. You’d better go.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like to give me a goodbye kiss, would you?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t.’

  He laughed and turned to Duffy. ‘Will I come to your house on Monday night, Duffy?’

  ‘All right, Johnny.’ Duffy sounded as if it was he and not Crosbie that had the unbearable headache.

  ‘Have a good time with Molly, Duffy.’

  They watched him go through the gates and disappear.

  ‘You didn’t warn him to keep away from the church tomorrow,’ she said. ‘You’re stupid if you have anything more to do with him. You’ll end up murdering somebody. Are you feeling all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t look it. What about the money, Duffy?’ After all she’d earned it.

  He took two five pound notes from his pocket and gave them to her.

  ‘Thanks. These might save my life. Well, Duffy, this is goodbye.’

  ‘I’ll walk with you to the bus-stop.’

  ‘No. It’ll be safer if we go alone.’

  ‘Will you be all right?’

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘I care.’

  ‘You’ve a funny way of showing it.’

  ‘You have relatives in Glasgow, haven’t you?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself. I wish I could say the same about you. Be kind to big Molly. Somebody has to be. Maybe I’ll drop you a line some time. Give me a couple of minutes to get clear. So long.’

  ‘Goodbye, Helen.’

  She hurried away then, after a last long look into his face. She saw no affection there. Like her he had not let himself get into the habit.

  She found there were tears in her eyes. Behind her she heard what she at first thought was him laughing. But she had never heard him laughing even quietly, far less screaming with laughter like that. It must have been a bird or an animal in the wood, perhaps a rabbit caught in a snare.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  He should have been glad that she was gone and he would never again have to endure her taunts and provocations.

  ‘Maybe you don’t tell lies, but you think them.’

  ‘You wouldn’t ask Margaret Porteous to do this, would you?’

  ‘You’ve never given that much of yourself to anyone.’

  ‘You’ll end up by murdering somebody.’

  When he had ordered Crosbie to threaten her with the knife a part of him had been in deadly earnest. She was not only a hindrance but also a danger. If she had thought he was going too far she might have betrayed him, for his own good she would have claimed. Therefore it was as well that she was gone.

  Why then from this doorway was he watching her anxiously as she waited in the bus shelter? Why was he having to restrain himself from running across the street and begging her not to go? And why, when the bus at last came, after nearly forty minutes by the town hall clocks, did his feeling of desolation increase as he saw her get on, with her bag slung over her shoulder?

  He needed her. Whenever he had been tempted to deceive himself she had made him face the truth.

  The bus disappeared round the corner at Martins’ big furniture shop. As clearly as if he had been sitting beside her he saw her grinning self-contemptuously at the dream she had had of marrying David Martin and living in comfort and respectability. Instead she had got VD and the blame of giving it to him. Yet she had made a joke of it. ‘If I couldn’t laugh at myself I’d go off my head. That’s what’s going to happen to you, Duffy.’

  Those whose purposes were as serious as his could not afford to laugh at themselves. Nowhere in the Bible did it say that Jesus Christ had ever done so.

  As he walked slowly home, he heard her voice, affectionate but mocking: ‘Tell the truth, Duffy. You ruined the library books because you never won prizes at school like Margaret Porteous and Stephen Telfer. Remember that picture of her with armfuls? And in the church tonight you weren’t trying to show them they were as common as shit. You did it because you envy them. I was wrong when I said you weren’t human. You just won’t admit it.’

  Tomorrow night he was going to admit it, when Molly McGowan came to his house. He would do with her what Mick Dykes and Johnny Crosbie and many others had done. There would be this difference in his case: the act by which he would acknowledge his common humanity would also leave him purged of many impure longings.

  He could not continue to wage his war against lies and arrogance if he himself was not truthful and humble.

  He had been home less than fifteen minutes when the door bell rang. It could not be Mrs Munro this time for on Saturday nights she went to Bingo. In any case the thumb on the button was too gentle for hers, or for Cooley’s. It could be Molly, too shy to press hard. Through over-eagerness and typical confusion she had come a night too soon. He was not ready for her yet. His mind had to be prepared with prayer or meditation.

  It was Mrs Ralston, wearing a red dress and white slippers with red pom-poms.

  ‘Sorry to trouble you, Duffy,’ she whispered. ‘Have you got company?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I thought Helen Cooley was staying with you.’

  ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘Oh. Well, if you’ve a minute to spare, Duffy, Jack would like to see you.’

  ‘What for?’

  She smiled. ‘To say goodbye, I think. He’s always liked you, Duffy.’

  She breathed quickly, as if she had been running. There was something false about her smile.

  He heard Cooley’s voice in his mind: ‘It’s not Jack that wants you, it’s the wee darkie herself. Look, she’s just had a bath, she smells like roses, and under that dress she’s got very little on: though that’s not the only reason why she’s shivering. She wants you to comfort her. And couldn’t you do with some comforting yourself?’

  ‘I’m just in,’ he said.

  ‘Take your time. Come up when you’re ready.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I’ll leave the door open.’

  She gave him another false smile and then hurried upstairs.

  In the bathroom he washed his hands, for the second time since his return home.
He was thinking of Mr Ralston, who would be dead in a day or two.

  A minute or two later he was knocking quietly on the open door.

  ‘Come in, Duffy,’ she called. ‘Shut the door.’

  He had been in her house before and had admired the bright optimistic colours of the wall-paper, carpets, and loose covers. His mother on the other hand, invited up for a neighbourly cup of tea, had said that the china geese on the wall and the big picture of a wood in autumn with Bambi-like deer showed vulgar taste. ‘But what else would you expect from somebody from the Gorbals?’ She had been envious of Mrs Ralston’s slim figure, and had attributed it, like the swarthiness, to some disease. ‘I don’t trust people who are always cheerful when by rights they should be miserable and ashamed.’

  Mrs Ralston asked him to sit beside her on the orange sofa, in front of the gas fire. In her cheap red dress she was more elegant than Mrs Porteous in her expensive tweed costume. She had tea ready, the pot inside a tartan cosy, the cups and saucers white with gold designs, and the small milk jug and sugar bowl silver. (Imitation silver, his mother had said.) There were chocolate biscuits and serviettes of white lacy paper.

  Again he heard Cooley’s voice: ‘When Mick visits Fat Annie he has to drink beer out of cans.’

  Amidst Mrs Ralston’s perfume he smelled disinfectant. There was no sound from the dying man.

  ‘Jack’s dozed off again,’ she said. ‘He’s due his medicine in another ten minutes.’ She glanced at the gilt clock on the mantelpiece. ‘It’s to dull the pain. There’s no cure. We’re just waiting for what the doctor called a merciful release.’ She smiled, as she poured the tea. ‘See the photograph?’ It stood beside the clock. ‘Guess who they are?’

  He knew it was her wedding photograph. In her white dress she was beautiful, with her hair blacker than it was now. How eagerly and courageously she was looking forward to her new life!

  ‘I was just eighteen,’ she said. ‘Jack wasn’t twenty. We were too young. Don’t make that mistake, Duffy.’

  She hadn’t been able to prevent Cissie making it.

  ‘They used to say my mother must have had an affair with an Italian,’ she said. ‘Because of my darkness. We went to Dunbar for our honeymoon. Jack would have preferred Blackpool, but I wanted somewhere quiet. I was very romantic in those days. Dunbar’s a small fishing port on the east coast. It was June but freezing cold. There was a wall at the harbour with dozens of birds’ nests in it: kittewakes. They flew about crying “Kittewake, kittewake.” We were very happy there but somehow we never went back.’ She smiled. ‘We’ve been to Blackpool four times.’