All the Colours of the Town (7 page)

‘Hey, he looks like a pimp now,’ said the one beside me. ‘We’re his bitches. D’you feel like a pimp, man?’

‘Not especially.’

‘You’re mental, Diane.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Gerry.’

‘Gerry!’ They mugged disbelief. ‘
Gerry?
You a pape?’

‘I’m a journalist.’

I slowed for an oncoming lorry.

‘Are you writing it up for the paper; the Walk?’

‘That’s the idea.’

‘Will you put us in?’

‘What paper is it?’

‘Where’s your photographer?’ Diane struck a
poledance
pose, hands above her head.

‘It’s the
Tribune on Sunday
. I don’t have one.’

‘Too bad.’ She pulled the visor down, checked herself in the mirror, rubbed a finger along her teeth.

‘Hey, you got anything to drink?’

‘There’s some water.’ I nodded towards the glove
compartment
. ‘In there.’

‘He’s looking at your legs, Diane.’

‘Dirty bugger.’

She paused with the bottle in her hand.

‘Are you looking at my legs?’

‘No, I–’

‘How no?’

The three of them sputtered, the two in the back
leaning
together till their heads touched. I looked around at Diane again. The set of her lips, or the line of her nose: something was familiar. I seemed to know her. Before I could place it we had reached Crosskirk, its long main street of brown sandstone.

‘Can you drop us at the puggies?’

At the amusements arcade they climbed out and were swallowed up in the dark and noise and coloured lights. Two boys in Rangers tops by the door turned to check out their arses then glared back at me. Diane spun round, once, a cute 360 turn: a flash of teeth, a quick twist of the wrist, a ripple of white pleated skirt.

I drove up the High Street, past Boots the Chemist, the Masonic Lodge, Blockbuster Video, the British Legion. A stylised eye on a billboard advertised the current series of
Big Brother
. I passed a mural, stiff-limbed figures in
balaclavas
and black combat jackets, hardware held aloft: ‘UFF 2nd BATT C COMPANY’. A knot of boys at the war memorial turned to watch me pass. Old fears began to surface. How Catholic did you look? Could people tell? Was the Forester’s dark bottle-green green enough to arouse suspicion?

Near the top of the hill, tied to a lamp-post was a
cardboard
sign with an arrow, a capital P and the logo of an Orangeman (bowler hat and chevron-shaped sash). I
followed
the arrow to a big stretch of wasteground in what looked to have been an industrial estate. It was busy already: buses and cars parked in makeshift lines. I left the Forester beside a Parks of Hamilton coach and
headed
out to see the fun.

I like the Walk. I know you’re not supposed to. I know it’s a throwback, a discharge of hate, a line of orange pus clogging the streets of central Scotland. But I like it
anyway
. I like the cheap music, its belligerent jauntiness. I like the crisp gunfire of the snares. I like the band
uniforms
and the hats and the apocalyptic names stencilled on the Lambeg drums: Cragside Truth Defenders; Denfield Martyrs Memorial Band; Pride of Glengarnock Fifes and Drums.

For most folk, a parade’s an excuse to throw off restraint. In most parades, the participants take their cue from the bands; you think of Rio, its swirl of sequins and ostrich feathers, the bobbing phalanxes of militant Sowetans, Pamplona’s neckerchiefed
riau-riau
dancers. And then there’s Scotland’s Orangemen. Here they come, in their Sunday suits, dark, with just that grudging flash of colour at the shoulders, step by dispassionate step, Bibles closed, umbrellas rolled. Lenten faces and tight, teetotal lips. It’s a carnival of restraint, a flaunting of
continence
. The music rolls past, sends out its invitation to swagger and reel. But the marchers step carefully on, unmoved, without the least roll of the hips.

All except for the drum major, who dances enough for everyone. He takes up the shortfall, whirling and
spinning
, knocking himself out. All their sinful urges, all the demons of the tribe: he takes them into himself and dances them out. He’s the leader, but there’s something sacrificial too, like he’s some kind of outcast or
scapegoat
. He’s a mock monarch, the King of the Wood,
raising
a bandaged fist to pluck his sceptre from the skies.

On the sidelines, parts of the crowd catch the infection. They surrender to the music, cavorting on the pavement, drunkenly Stripping the Willow. But after all, these are only spectators, and the Order, in its official
pronouncements
, likes to stress its disapproval of hangers-on. Is this what bothers the high-ups, I wonder? Not the
drunkenness
and the battle songs, the tally of cautions for breach of the peace. Just the sheer enjoyment, the looks on the faces? The music plays and people dance.

*

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’ll 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.’