And the Land Lay Still (36 page)

In retrospect
is better than
with hindsight
.
In retrospect
suggests sustained reflection, coherent analysis.
With hindsight
says you’d have done things differently, if you’d only fucking known.

One time – years ago this was, and years after he came to Mr Fodrek’s mansions for the falling and fallen – he was in the launderette, sitting on one of the wee metal chairs with the wobbly backs, waiting for the drier to finish. Daisy and Linda were slaving away as usual, unsticking stuck token slides, filling beakers of powder, hauling bundles of wet clothes from washer to drier, folding sheets between them, bagging up service washes. They worked well together: Daisy the bright one, Linda the not so, but they were friends, he could tell that, they were loyal to each other. They never stopped for more than two minutes, their mugs of tea were only ever half-drunk, they had no airs and little grace about them yet they were always helpful and never impatient with the students, the businessmen with no wives or washing machines, the waifs and strays like himself. A friendly word or a smile was never distant from their lips. They called everybody ‘dear’ regardless of age, sex, race or religion: a democracy of endearment. It was one of the reasons he liked going there, he felt safe in their domain of
churning machines, humidity, tangled clothes and washing-powder scents, safe and comforted.

So anyway. It was the year the minimum wage was introduced, of course it was. Up until then he’d always done his own washing and drying because it was a pound extra for the service wash and he was watching the pounds, kind of, by then. On this occasion there was a lull in the human traffic even though all the machines were going, and for five minutes Peter was the only customer. Then the door banged open and in came a big guy in an expensive wool coat, a quality suit underneath it, polished leather brogues, polished mean face. Peter thought, I know that face, but he couldn’t get it, not straightaway. Behind the man was a skinny, psychotic-looking sidekick in synthetics and trainers, carrying a briefcase.

Aye, ladies, the big man said. What’s going on? It was nothing, what he said, but he made it sound intimidating, like he’d just caught them at it, whatever ‘it’ was. They looked at him from under their brows. Aye, Mr Dobie. It was obvious that they were afraid of him even though they were afraid of nobody else that ever came in. They didn’t like him but when he smiled his mean smile it said they were pals, weren’t they, and dared them to disagree.

Mr Dobie. Peter remembered. It was his old landlord from Leith, when he had the agency. His own business, for fuck’s sake. He’d met Dobie only a couple of times, right at the start when he’d taken on the premises. In those days Dobie was wearing jeans and a leather jacket and was on his own. Not so fleshy. Harder, but that didn’t mean he was any less dangerous now. He’d just acquired a dangerous sidekick.

Peter had paid the rent in Leith by monthly cheque, made out to some spurious business name and posted to an address out in the sticks. West Lothian: Broxburn or Bathgate or somewhere. He’d never been late with the rent, because he didn’t think Dobie was the kind of guy you’d want to piss off even temporarily. So he’d never given him any trouble and he’d never had any back, or any property maintenance for that matter. When he wound up the agency – when it collapsed under the weight of his inability to stop drinking – he’d not bothered to say he was leaving, just locked up
and left. Hadn’t asked for his deposit back. It wasn’t that kind of arrangement.

Daisy carried change in a money belt round her waist. It was usually her job to manage the cash transactions because she was better at adding up than Linda. Notes went in a till at the back of the shop. Nothing was ever rung up on the till, the women just pinged open the drawer and put the cash in it. Now Daisy handed over the money belt to the sidekick, and Dobie went to the till and opened it. He counted and pocketed the paper money and muttered a number at Sidekick that Peter didn’t hear over the sound of the driers. Sidekick added up the change, made a note of the totals, bagged some of it and put it in the briefcase. The rest went back in the money belt, which he returned to Daisy. All this took no more than two minutes.

Everything all right? Dobie said. His voice was different. He spoke with a weird drawl, California out of Leith, which seemed to twist the mouth into its thin, cruel smile. Good-looking bastard all the same, if you liked slime. It’s Daisy, isn’t it? Daisy and Linda, that’s it. Plenty of business, I see?

Oh aye, Mr Dobie, we’ve been busy this week right enough. Never stopped.

All the machines working okay?

Aye. A couple of jams, the tokens get bent sometimes, but we got them free.

Good. He was profoundly uninterested in their trials, so long as the machines were all working. Bryce here looking after you?

Aye, Mr Dobie. Here’s the record sheet for ye. She handed him a bit of paper. It’s aw doon there, the jams and that.

He didn’t look at the paper, but passed it on to Sidekick. Go ahead, Bryce, he said.

Bryce opened the briefcase again and took out a notebook. He went down the washing machines, looking at a meter on each one beside the token slide, and making an entry. Peter had noticed the meters before. They recorded the number of washes each machine did. Bryce went through the same procedure with the driers. When he’d finished he handed the book to Dobie, who glanced at it and handed it back. Bryce put it in the briefcase. Dobie nodded at him again and he pulled out two brown pay packets and handed them to the women.

There you go, Dobie said. One for each of you. As if he was Santa Claus and Bryce one of his elves.

Thanks, Mr Dobie, Daisy and Linda said, and Linda dropped hers into the pocket of her apron and went off to take a load out of one of the driers. Daisy waited, like she was steeling herself to say something.

Dobie didn’t notice. Aye well, he said, looking around with a sneer on his face. It was his place, apparently, but he didn’t seem to like it much. His gaze fell on Peter, moved on. As if he were a piece of shit Dobie didn’t want on his gleaming brogues. No recognition, apparently, but why would there be? Peter thought, okay, I am a piece of shit but I’m not your piece of shit and never was.

See you next week then, ladies.

Daisy said, Mr Dobie?

He’d already started to leave. He stopped, turned round. Yes?

Bryce was gonnae put oor wages up.

What’s that?

Wi this new minimum wage that’s come in. He was gonnae put them up.

Dobie looked at Bryce. I thought you’d explained that to everybody.

I did, Bryce said.

You explained how we’re working to comply with the new legislation? How it’s quite a complicated process, making sure everybody’s treated fairly?

Aye, I did.

Dobie sighed. It was all a bit beneath him. Next week, he said to Daisy. These things take time. Bryce says he’s already explained it to you. Obviously we have to comply, but there’s not much point in paying you a higher rate if I put myself out of business, and you out of work. You understand?

Aye, Daisy said.

If everything balances, you’ll get the increase next week.

That’s two weeks late, Daisy said boldly, but her voice was shaking. We’ll need to get it backdated.

Bryce scowled, mouthing at her to shut the fuck up.

Is that so? Dobie said. The drawl ceased and there was no smile left. Do you think you’re being hard-done-by, Daisy? Think you’re losing out?

She couldn’t quite speak, but she managed to stay looking at him.

Dobie turned to Bryce. There were discrepancies last week, isn’t that right, Bryce?

Aye, Mr Dobie, and the week before.

And quite a few weeks before that? Going back years even?

Aye, Mr Dobie.

So, Daisy, the reality is I’m the one that’s losing out. The reality is I should be docking you both, because I can’t run a business if the numbers don’t add up. If I’m down at the end of the week, what am I supposed to do, ignore it?

Daisy started to say something. Didn’t have a chance.

But Bryce tells me Linda’s arithmetic’s not that hot. So, I don’t ignore it but I’m prepared for a bit of give and take. You sort it out between yourselves. You’ll get your minimum wage next week, like I said. Bryce tells me you’re both good workers. I’ll take his word for it, and I’ll turn a blind eye here and there, but – a measured pause – don’t push your fucking luck.

He glanced at Peter again, a little longer this time, as if to say, that applies to you too, piece of shit, and then he and Bryce were out of the door, Bryce flinging a murderous look at Daisy as he went.

Peter’s load finished drying. He stuffed it all into the black bin bag he’d brought it in. Daisy and Linda were counting their wages and cursing Dobie for a grasping, thieving, cheating, lying, bullying bastard. When Peter came up to them to say goodbye they softened immediately. Aye, cheerio, dear. See ye next time.

You should report him, he said. They laughed at him kindly, as if he’d offered to buy them an ice cream each. I’m serious, you should take him to a wages tribunal.

Aye, that’ll be right.

He’s got to pay you the minimum wage.

We’d be oot o here afore we could say ‘tribunal’, never mind turn up at one.

We’d mair likely turn up in the Union Canal.

He teased the details out of them. There were always discrepancies, from one week to the next. The takings never tallied with the number of machine uses, even when Daisy was meticulous in writing down the number of jams, breakdowns and so on. Bryce always underpaid them, so they always scraped a bit
of loose change into their pockets to make up for it. Bryce knew they did it, they knew he was underpaying them, they knew he was skimming on his own behalf, Dobie knew Bryce was skimming. Everybody knew what the game was, and so long as it stayed small-scale Dobie was cool about it. But the fact that he’d come in at all, the first time in months, meant he was letting them all know.
Don’t push your fucking luck
.

So now he says he’s going to up your wages, Peter said. Will you get what you’re due? Three-sixty an hour?

They laughed again at his naivety.

Look, he said, it’s none of my business but …

Aye, we ken, we ken. Daisy said. Three-sixty’s aboot right. By his way of adding it up, we’ll get three-sixty an hour, all right? An hourly rate of two pound sixty plus what we get for a service wash and that makes it up tae three-sixty.

That’s what Bryce tellt us, Linda said.

It’s a pound for a service wash, right? Daisy said. We get that. Straight in oor hand. Suits us, suits them. So there ye go.

But not everybody pays for a service wash, Peter said. I don’t.

What are you, an inspector or something? Linda said, and they both roared with laughter. Look, dear, the best thing you could dae, if ye’re feeling sorry for us, is let us dae your wash for ye. That’ll dae us a lot mair good than any tribunal.

He’s ripping you off, he said.

Well? We’re ripping him off, she said. Anyway, canna stand here chatting aboot it aw day. You mind what I said, dear, aboot us daein your wash for ye.

I will, he said.

And you keep your nose oot of it, won’t ye? Ye dinna want tae get on the wrang side of Dobie.

Or Bryce, Linda said.

Don’t stir things up for us, Daisy said. We’re fine as we are.

What could he do? He was a broken man, no use for getting on the wrong side of anyone. So he’d complied with their request. Complicit, yet again. And ever since, he’d paid the extra for the service wash, and left his black bin bag with them. He’d never seen Dobie in there again. Or Bryce, come to that. Still, it rankled. Frank Dobie, Leith landlord, launderette king of the Lothians. He
thought, if I’d been on the ball at the time, maybe I could have made something of the old connection. Maybe I could have done something for the women.

Kidding himself, of course. He was way past doing anything about anything.

There’s a TV in one corner of the living room. Most of the time it’s dead, a kind of blocked conduit through which the outside world used to come in, but he plugged the gap by unplugging the lead and now the world doesn’t come in that way. Occasionally when what’s inside gets too oppressive he reverses the procedure, just for some relief, but it doesn’t last. The news is too much, the game shows too banal, the reality shows incomprefuckinghensible. Documentaries just rub his face in their so-called revelations. He caught one about an MI5 plot to undermine the Wilson government in the 1970s – a load of rubbish, he ended up roaring at every utterance coming out of the telly, RUBBISH RUBBISH RUBBISH, because he couldn’t remember which bits of the story were actually true, and this is a man who’s something of an expert when it comes to theorising about conspiracies but he’d taken a fair drink by the time it came on, and eventually a neighbour was hammering at the door threatening to kill him if he didn’t can the fucking racket. Another one was a programme about Ian Fleming, footage of Fleming in his Jamaican home explaining how he’d wanted a bland, flat name for his hero, he’d had a book called
Birds of the West Indies
by James Bond and he’d thought, that’ll do, and now he was wondering in his toff voice what the original Mr Bond thought about it all, and Peter was shouting
I’M
THE ORIGINAL BOND, YOU BASTARD and then had to unplug the TV to stop himself before the neighbour came again and broke his door down and really did kill him. Aye, the telly’s not a good idea these days, it’s all crap that’s on it anyway and he doesn’t need it, he has plenty of cartoons and scary monsters and fuck knows what else to keep him entertained without having to fork out for the TV licence that he doesn’t, in any case, possess.

Another time, long before the launderette incident but just how long he cannot say with any certainty, can’t even remember where
he was living at the time, whether he was a tenant of Mr Dobie or Mr Fodrek, anyway what the fuck, he was on the batter one evening, rolling from bar to bar, a downward trajectory, and eventually he found himself in the New Town needing a place to piss. Staggered down ancient steps into a basement area on George Street, secreted himself in the shadows and let a long, lovely stream of relief flow across the flagstones. Climbing back up he found himself virtually tripping on the heels of two police officers, one male one female, and thinking they’d probably see his condition as an excuse for unwanted discourse he turned sharp left through the doors of a bookshop that happened to be passing at that moment. He wandered blindly among the shelves, and slowly became aware from the drone of a voice towards the back of the shop that he’d gatecrashed a reading. A guy in a cravat posing as a writer was holding forth to an assembly of twenty or so. After a minute Peter understood that the guy really
was
a writer, a novelist. Somebody from the audience asked him why he set his books in Italy, France, America and England, but not in Scotland. The writer stroked his chin. Because nothing happens here. The centres of activity, the places where decisions are made, where politics and personalities and power collide, are elsewhere: London, New York, Paris, Rome. Anywhere but this quiet backwater. Delightful to live in but nothing to write about. That’s why. There were hums of agreement, an undermumble of dissent. Peter thought, You’re wrong. Things
do
happen here. Political things. People get locked up on dodgy evidence procured by servants of the state. People get murdered for obstructing the wishes of the authorities. Then the murderers get murdered. Keeps it neat and tidy. Hush hush. Believe me, I know. But then on the other hand you’re right, nothing happens here. I’m talking crap. Nothing will ever come to light. Nobody need ever find out. You’re right, this is a quiet fucking backwater but there are bodies weighed down with stones lying at the bottom. Believe me, I know. He was aware of a voice shouting, not the voice that had previously been droning, he was aware of heads turning, a security guard approaching. I’ll have to ask you to leave. You’re creating a disturbance. Hand firmly under the elbow, other hand in small of back. Go placidly, Peter told the turned heads, amid the noise and haste, and remember
what peace there may be in silence. He heard laughter, the writer saying, Well,
as
I was saying … And it was too late, as they got to the door, it was no fucking use protesting to the guard at that stage, Look, I’m a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars, I have a right to be here, because with one good shove the guard had propelled him ten yards along the pavement and suggested that an early return would be met with renewed and fiercer hostilities. It was too late and no use, and the rest of the night was a cloud of unknowing, morphing into a slow, remorseless awakening sprawled on the floor of a room nobody ejected him from, which meant it was probably somewhere he then called home.