Lennox l-1

by Craig Russell

  War fucks everything up. More than that, it fucks people up. And that’s what Levendale House had become: a refuge for the seriously fucked up.

  The funny thing about when the war was over was that everybody wanted to talk about it. Eulogize about it. And when they weren’t talking about it they were watching films about it, all of which seemed to star John Mills. It was as if there was some collective desire to convince each other that it had actually been a big adventure that brought everybody together and had brought the best out of even the worst.

  Which was, of course, a crock of shit.

  What people didn’t want to see was the shadow of misery the war had cast behind it: the tangle of damaged humans in its wake. But there were people who were prepared to look that truth in the face and deal with it every day. The people who worked at Levendale House looked after the broken bodies and broken minds of boys who had been thrown into the mincer and come back old men. Blind, crippled, mad.

  The duty sister at Levendale, a tired-looking woman in her fifties, showed me into a bright day room with a view over the house’s vast gardens. I guessed she was the same sister I had spoken to on the telephone. She had asked me what my connection to the patient was and I had explained we had a friend, an old comrade, in common.

  ‘Did you know Billy before… well, before he was wounded?’ she asked with a concerned look. I got the feeling that her concern was as much for me as her patient.

  ‘No. As a matter of fact I didn’t. Like I said, we have a mutual friend who I’m trying to track down. We lost touch after the war. But I never met Pattison before.’

  ‘That’s maybe just as well. I think it’s best that I prepare you… Billy’s wounds were severe and extremely disfiguring.’

  ‘I’ve seen my share,’ I said.

  The sister left me in the day room. I took in the huge windows opening out onto the gardens, the wood panelling, the ornate cornicing. The Victorian architect of this house had imagined a patrician family spending mornings in this room, secure in their place within the governing machinery of a British Empire on which the sun never set. But two wars had turned the world on its head and the Empire on its ass and now Levendale House and its elegant morning room were home to wounded ex-servicemen who had no place anywhere else.

  The sister’s warning was not overdone. When she returned she pushed a wheelchair into the room. It was clear that Lance Corporal William Pattison and a grenade had encountered one another at very close quarters. What I couldn’t work out was which had taken the biggest bite out of the other. One side of Pattison’s face was gone and his mouth had been reduced to a lopsided, lipless slit. Whatever arts and crafts they encouraged here, playing the trumpet was not going to be an option for Pattison. Taut new skin had been stretched over where the right side of his jaw, his right cheek and eye should have been.

  The left side of his face was pretty messed up too and gave the impression that someone had pushed all the features around and hadn’t managed to get them exactly where they had been before, added to which there had clearly been extensive burning to what was left of his face. Lon Chaney had nothing on this guy. The mask twisted into a grimace and I realized that Pattison was trying to smile at me.

  ‘I don’t get a lot of visitors,’ he said. You don’t say, I thought. His voice was wet, the words chewed in his half mouth. Like I had told the sister, I’d seen my share, but looking at Pattison made me feel pretty sick. I did my best to smile. I consoled myself with the fact that even if my smile was half-hearted, it was twice as good as Pattison would ever manage. ‘Sister says you know Tam.’

  ‘Our paths crossed,’ I said. I realized that Pattison didn’t know that McGahern had died. I decided not to say anything for the moment. I’d see how the conversation went. The poor fuck had enough to contend with.

  ‘What unit were you in?’ Pattison asked. I noticed that the right side of his body was limp. Paralysed, I guessed.

  ‘First Canadian. Italy, Holland and Germany.’

  ‘How did you know Tam then?’ There seemed to be no suspicion in Pattison’s voice. But there again inflection was difficult when you were half a tongue and sixteen teeth down on the deal.

  ‘Long story. You were with him in Gideon?’

  ‘And before. Tam was my sergeant. He saved my skin more times than I can remember.’

  ‘What about…’ I clumsily indicated the wheelchair.

  ‘Oh… that was after Tam was shipped home. My own stupid fault. Acting the big bollocks. I didn’t take cover quick enough.’

  ‘What kind of guy was Tam? I mean back then? To be honest, I only really caught up with him towards the end of the war.’

  ‘The best. The absolute best. Our unit had this officer — really good as officers go, and you had to be hard to be part of Gideon, even if you was an officer. But he was all theory. Tam was the bloke you wanted running things when shite started to fly. Was you an NCO yourself?’

  ‘No. Officer. Captain.’

  ‘Oh, sorry sir. Didn’t mean no disrespect. About officers, I mean.’

  ‘None taken, Billy. I came across my fair share of wankers with pips on their shoulders myself. Anyway I’m not an officer now.’ I pulled a chair up opposite his wheelchair and sat down. ‘You and Tam saw a lot of action with Gideon, I take it?’

  ‘Oh aye. We was in the thick of it. Our unit was mainly Jews and a couple of Sudanese. Won’t hear anything against them. I learned a lot when I was out there. Tough bastards, particularly them Jewish blokes. They had been fighting the Arabs for years. If you needed them to kick arses then they didn’t need a second telling. Got their own country now, of course. God help any poor bastard that tries to take it from them.’

  ‘The Jewish men in your unit… Tam told me some of them were ex-members of the Special Night Squads.’

  ‘Aye. That’s right. Most of them if not all. That’s what I meant. They had seen a lot of action before the war. Taking out Arab resistance units. Protecting the Iraqi petroleum pipeline, that kind of stuff. Real hard bastards. And they really hated the Germans. Not many prisoners were taken, if you catch my drift. But them Jewish lads were a great laugh. Tam really got on with them. He was interested in that kind of thing. You know, the history and stuff about the Middle East. That’s why he got on so well with our officer. He’d been a journalist or something before the war. Correspondent I think you call them. Middle East was his special thing.’

  ‘Do you know if Tam kept in touch with any of the other members of your unit?’

  ‘I would think so. He looked me up all right. Don’t you know that it was Tam who got my face fixed up?’

  I was confused for a moment. I did my best to sweep the that’s it fixed up? expression that must have flashed across my face. ‘You’ve heard from Tam since the end of the war?’

  ‘Oh aye. He visited me four, maybe five times. To start with I had to have a dressing on my face. For months. The wound just wouldn’t heal and there was always a danger of me getting infected. They was trying to sort me out with a surgeon who could fix it, but the main man was always booked up. Tam sorted it all out for me. He paid for me to have it done private. The best plastic surgeon in the business. Mr Alexander Knox. I don’t know how Tam managed to get him, even paying. But it was Mr Knox who fixed me up. I’m really pleased with the result.’

  ‘He did a great job,’ I said and smiled. But don’t ’phone Sam Goldwyn and ask if he’s looking for a new leading man, I thought. ‘When was the last time you saw Tam?’

  ‘About a year ago,’ Pattison said and some saliva bubbled at the corner of his slit mouth. Lips must have cost extra. ‘He was looking very flash. He’s in business now. Doing really well for himself.’

  ‘Did you know Tam’s brother at all?’

  ‘No. Never met him, but heard all about him. They was identical twins, you know, but Tam hated his brother. Tam said he could never work out how two brothers could be so alike on the outside but so different on the inside. He said his bro
ther was rotten. Yellow. And a rat.’

  ‘Did Tam talk about him much?’

  ‘Tam didn’t talk about anything much. He listened. But when he did say something it was worth hearing. But aye… he did talk about his brother a bit. He said his brother was a shirker who’d dodged his call-up. Tam seemed worried that he’d left his brother in charge of the family business, whatever it was they did.’

  There was a pause. I looked out of the bay windows again and commented on how nice the gardens were. Truth was I was taking a break from looking at Pattison’s face.

  ‘Did you ever come across a Jimmy Wallace in the army?’ I asked eventually.

  ‘Not Jimmy Wallace… Jamie Wallace. You know how toffs are with names. That’s who I was talking about earlier, when I said about our officer. That was him. Captain Jamie Wallace, the guy who had been a journalist before the war. The Middle East expert. He led our unit and did a pretty good job of it, but like I said it was Tam who was in charge when it came to fighting.’

  I thought about what he had said. An officer. Why would an ex-army officer end up as a hanger-on to a thug gangster? ‘How did Tam get on with Wallace?’

  ‘They got on all right. Captain Wallace relied on Tam and Tam was always interested in what the Captain had to say. They was different types, but they seemed to really get on.’

  After they wheeled Pattison away I desperately needed to get out of the care home. I stood outside the front door and took a few deep breaths of non-Glasgow air. There was no sign of the Austin 16HP and I guessed it was parked outside the grounds. When I got into my car I sat without starting it for a few moments. I tilted the rear-view mirror so I could see the faint web of scars on my left cheek. Someone like Pattison’s doctor had once fixed me up. But that was the difference that being a few feet further away from an exploding grenade meant. I could have ended up like Pattison. Easy. I sat for a moment and thought up a few more gags about his badly rebuilt face, laughing quietly to myself. That way I could maybe kill the ache in my gut and the sting in my eyes every time I thought of the poor bastard.

  When you’d had the kind of war I’d had, you learned to laugh at suffering. So long as it wasn’t yours. If you laughed at it, then maybe it wouldn’t reach you. Get you. And if you believed that, then that was the biggest joke of all.

  The Austin 16HP picked me up again and followed me back into town. It stayed about three cars back in an attempt at discretion. I had no doubt that Sneddon’s men were handy with a pair of bolt-cutters or cracking open kneecaps with a claw hammer, but surveillance wasn’t their strong suit. It didn’t matter; I was glad to feel that there was someone looking over my shoulder.

  I had a date for that night. I took Jeannie, a small, dark and curvy waitress I had picked up, to see Sudden Fear with Jack Palance and Joan Crawford at the Regal in Sauchiehall Street. Jeannie insisted on the Glaswegian propriety of not sitting in the back row: a public indication of her respectability. The truth was that I was more interested in seeing the film than moist fumblings in her underwear, and we both knew that that would follow anyway in the sweaty, steamed-up confines of my Austin Atlantic.

  In Glasgow having a push-bike you paid for yourself rather than nicking it made you flash. Having a car elevated you to Hollywood-level glamour. The fact that my car was a stylish Austin A90 Atlantic Coupe had been more instrumental in winning me pussy than my gentle demeanour, debonair wit and good looks.

  ‘You look a bit like him,’ Jeannie commented as we came out of the cinema into night air that was too cold for the time of year.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jack Palance. You’re better looking, but you do look a bit like him.’

  ‘You think?’ I smiled. I looked at Jeannie. I certainly couldn’t have compared her to Joan Crawford, or even Gloria Grahame who had, as always, played the cheap good-time girl. When I had first seen Jeannie there had been something about her reminded me of Carmen Miranda: dark hair and eyes, olive skin, full sensual lips. But when I’d picked her up that night I realized that the something about her had probably been the half bottle of rye whiskey I’d drunk and the dim smoky light. As I looked at my little waitress and reappraised the dark eyes, olive skin and full, sensuous lips, the closest comparison I could come up with was Edward G. Robinson with a permanent wave. Suddenly my ardour diminished. ‘Yeah, I’ve been told that before,’ I said in response to her Jack Palance remark. ‘There’s a reason for it.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Long story.’

  I was parked further up Sauchiehall Street, closer to the Locarno Ballroom. We walked back.

  ‘It’s a great car,’ she said as I held the door open for her. Then, come-hither-ingly: ‘Could we go for a drive?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. My plan had been to drive Jeannie out of the city, park up on Gleniffer Braes, where there were great views of the city, and trick her into a blow-job. But try as I might I couldn’t get out of my head the image of Little Caesar chomping down on a cigar. It was then I saw the dark-coloured 16HP parked a few cars back. Sneddon was taking my protection just a little bit too seriously. Take the night off, guys, I thought.

  ‘Gimme a second; some friends of mine…’ I said to Jeannie and I walked up to the 16HP. I could see it wasn’t Twinkletoes and I guessed it was the other thug whom Sneddon had promised to lend me. The guy behind the wheel started his engine as soon as he saw me approach. I noticed that he had a large dressing on his cheek and it was then that I recognized him: he was one of the goons who had jumped me in Argyle Street. Specifically he was the fella whose cheek I had split open with the length of pipe. It was clear he was in no mood for a rematch without his pals and he slammed into reverse, braked, ripped teeth off his gears and sped off down Sauchiehall Street. I ran back to my car and tore out after him.

  The 16HP squealed into Blythswood Street and headed down towards the river. He ripped across the junction with Bath Street and just missed being side-slammed by a Rover. I swung around the tail of the Rover but a gap had opened up between us. He reached the Clyde end of Blythswood and swung a left without slowing onto the Broomielaw.

  I had to brake hard for a truck which stopped in my path while the driver bawled out of his cab and accused my mother of all kinds of acts, all indecent, some illegal and at least one of which I thought was physically impossible. I bumped up onto the kerb to navigate round him. It was only when I checked out of my side window that I realized that Jeannie was still sitting next to me. She was staring at me, eyes wide and mouth slack with shock.

  ‘Get out,’ I said as gently as I could. ‘I have to catch this guy. It’s business.’

  She still sat stunned. I reached over and opened the door and gave her a shove towards the street. ‘Out! Quick!’ She got out wordlessly and stood on the pavement still gawp-mouthed. ‘I’m sorry, Jeannie… I’ll call you…’

  I floored the accelerator and fired the Atlantic along Broomielaw in the direction of Paddy’s Market. The 16HP was nowhere to be seen but I knew if I made the right decisions I could close on him. He had either turned back into the city towards Glasgow Cross or had crossed the Clyde into the South Side. I put my money on the South Side: he would stand more risk of getting snarled up in the city and me catching up.

  I swung across the Albert Bridge. Crown Street was empty of cars. From here he could have taken the Carlisle road or headed back towards Govan and the Paisley road. Or he could even have headed off into the Gorbals, but I reckoned that would have been a bad move: actually, anyone heading off into the Gorbals, at any time, for any reason, was a bad move. In his case an Austin 16HP would have looked as much at home in the Gorbals as a priest in an Orange Hall.

  On a hunch, I turned towards Govan and followed Paisley Road West. Again I drove as fast as I dared but still caught no sight of the 16HP.

  I stopped under the railway bridge, switched the engine off and rolled down the window. The street was silent except for a Number Nine Corporation tram that trundled its way past heading from Paisley
to Maryhill. Sam Costa and his ludicrous moustache grinned inanely at me from a tattered poster, advising me that Erasmic shaving lather was just right. The night air had a texture to it, like the cold greasy soot that smeared the railway arches.

  He was gone. He could have taken any one of a dozen different directions after I had lost him dumping Jeannie on the pavement. I thought back to that moment and felt like shit, as I usually did when it came to reflecting on how I’d treated women.

  There were thousands of Jeannies in this city: uncomplicated girls with crap lives who looked to the dance halls and the cinemas for a scrap of glamour. All they wanted was a few moments while they were still young in which they could pretend that they wouldn’t, after all, end up swapping the grey drudgery of working in a factory or at best a shop for the grey drudgery of slaving for a man who would show them little affection and no respect and leave them with an army of kids to care for. The monotony of their week punctuated only by loveless whisky-drenched fumblings on a Saturday night. Or maybe the odd beating.

  I thought of poor Jeannie and the meagre dreams and aspirations that she may have had and felt sorry for having dumped her like that. Then I thought of how she had reminded me of Edward G. Robinson and started to laugh as I turned the ignition.

  I knew I’d lost the 16HP, but I decided to trace my way back along the river-edge quays just in case. There were a hundred nooks and crannies, alleys and yards where you could lie low. But my thinking was that the driver of the 16HP had used my temporary halt to put as much distance between us as possible.

  If Glasgow was the Empire’s industrial heart, then the Clyde was its main artery. I drove past Mavisbank Quay, Terminus Quay with its railyards and finally Kingston Dock. As I drove, stark white lights hovered over the ink sleek waters of the Clyde.

  Even at this time of night and this far into the city the river glittered with tugs, boats and barges and I could see the occasional fountain of sparks where some nightshift sculpted steel.