The Big Man (36 page)

‘Well done, big man. Ma money was always on ye.’

‘That was a chancy bet, Wullie. Ah was lucky tae get out alive, never mind win.’

‘Nut at all, Dan. Ye were never in any danger.’

‘Ah wish somebody had told me that.’

‘That ither business, Dan?’

Dan looked at him and took a moment to know what he meant, as if the question were in an archaic language Dan could barely recognise. He saw Wullie staring out from his fixed position while everything around him was shifting and sliding. He was like a man still looking for landmarks in the open sea.

‘Forget it, Wullie,’ Dan said gently. ‘Ah don’t live there any more.’

‘Ye mean you an’ Betty –’

Dan shook his head and smiled.

‘Betty an’ me are fine. Ah mean all that other stuff’s dead an’ gone. You see you bury it. It’s ma wife’s business an’ mine. All right?’

‘Certainly, certainly. No offence . . .’

Dan saw Wullie’s lips about to shape the familiar ‘big man’ and then abandon the sound. It was a mildly eerie feeling, like seeing your name erased from a commemorative tablet. As Wullie moved away, a worshipper who has found the shrine empty, Dan knew a just sense of himself in Wullie’s disappointment. To be still Betty’s man was a status greater than Wullie had wanted to bestow. He had never been who Wullie thought him to be. He was just glad to have discovered who he was, tense though that made him, coiling every time the pub door opened.

When it was Vince Mabon who came in, Dan watched him check the pub, still holding the door, and nod to someone outside. Frankie White followed him in. The presence of Frankie
tautened Dan, as if he might be an outrunner. He had no substance in himself, Dan knew, but he suggested it, like the shadow of a hawk across a field.

Frankie was performing camaraderie as he came through the bar and Dan found it difficult to feel angry with him, even remembering his travelling bag sitting on the hospital steps, as if telling him he had been evicted from Frankie’s life. You couldn’t ask Frankie to stand by you. He was on the run from himself, had been all his life. Yet watching him improvise himself from person to person, Dan was moved by him. He was like a busker, earning his sense of himself from what other people could spare.

He came up and stood beside Dan while Vince Mabon stood on Dan’s other side, as if they were putting him in brackets. Dan thought at first they were two strange people to be together and then thought perhaps they weren’t, since one fed materially off people like himself and the other intellectually.

‘Dan,’ Frankie said. ‘Can Ah buy ye a drink?’

Thanks, Frankie. But Ah’ve got a pint.’

‘A whisky then? After all, the fightin’s over.’

‘Is it? No thanks.’

Frankie seemed awkward for a moment, perhaps feeling the glibness of his mouth had said the wrong thing. He bought a whisky for himself and a pint for Vince Mabon.

‘Dan. Ah’m sorry for leavin’ ye like that. But Ah had no choice.’

‘Forget it.’

Dan sipped at his pint.

‘Ah mean that amounted to stealin’ Matt Mason’s car. An’ then there was the money. Ah had tae get that car back. Ah had no choice.’

‘It’s all right. Ye just did whit ye do, Frankie.’

‘As it was, Ah had tae make up a story.’

‘Ah’m sure it was good. Ah hope Ah didn’t disappoint ye by no’ hangin’ about the hospital till ye got back.’

‘Ah didn’t tell them that, Dan. Ah said Ah dropped ye in the town. Ah said ye told me you had Matt’s permission.’

Dan felt the ambiguity of the moment, both the strangeness
and the naturalness of their conversation held in balance. This was Frankie White, who came from Thornbank, often drank in here. This was a reminder of his possible death. This was a half-hearted friend, a half-hearted betrayer. This was the tension of threat alternating with the relaxation of ordinariness, like a prolonged experience of the moment when the whirr that stops the heart is just a bird rising suddenly from bushes. Dan felt the naturalness of danger, its ubiquity once you realised its nature.

‘Does that mean they don’t know Cutty got the money?’

‘Don’t know, Dan. Ah don’t think so. Haven’t heard too much. Ah mean, they’re no’ exactly invitin’ me to join the inner circle. But as far as Ah know, they haven’t looked near Cutty. He should be all right. One thing Ah
can
tell ye, Dan. They reckon his eyesight’s goin’ to be all right.’

‘Huh. Where does that leave you, Dan?’

Vince Mabon had spoken for the first time. Dan looked at him.

‘It leaves me where Ah’m standin’, Vince.’

‘But Cutty’s going to be fine.’

‘That’s great. What else could it be?’

Frankie, with nostrils like a thoroughbred for changes in the atmosphere, intervened.

‘What Vince means, Dan, is ye maybe feel ye jumped the gun a bit. Ah mean what ye did was spur o’ the minute.’

‘Ah know what Vince means, Frankie. He’s no’ that intellectual that Ah can’t understand him. But do you know what Ah mean? Ah’m glad for Cutty. Ye think he’s lettin’ me down by gettin’ his sight back? Ah didny just do it for Cutty. Ah did it for the two of us. It was maybe spur o’ the minute. But it was good spur o’ the minute. Ah’d been practisin’ for it all ma life.’

Vince shook his head. Frankie seemed disappointed.

‘Maybe Ah’ve wasted ma time comin’ here,’ Frankie said.

‘It depends what ye came for, Frankie,’ Dan said.

‘To get you out.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Matt Mason’s lookin’ for ye, Dan. That’s the word.’

‘It would be, wouldn’t it?’

‘He’s lookin’ for ye.’

‘He knows where Ah am.’

‘It would be better if he didn’t. Dan, it could be the night. Ah’m takin’ a chance just bein’ with you. But when Ah go out this pub, Ah’m havin’ it away on ma toes. Like, well away. What about you?’

‘What about me?’

‘Dan. Don’t ye understand what Ah’m tryin’ to say?’

‘Frankie, Ah don’t think
you
understand what ye’re tryin’ to say. An’ Ah don’t think ye will. Ever. Where is it ye’re goin’?’

‘London!’ Frankie said as if it was an incontrovertible argument.

‘What good’ll that do?’

‘Ah’ll be safe there. So would you. Ah know some people. Ah’ve got a few quid. Enough for the two of us. For a while at least. What d’ye say? Don’t be a mug.’

Don’t be a mug. Dan had often wondered about people’s dread of being a mug, not getting it right, as if it was possible to get it right. He suspected that from the time Jack Ferguson had died in the quarry he had known you didn’t get it right. If one person you loved could die, it couldn’t be right. All you could do was try to get it wrong on your own terms; as honestly as you knew how. He thought of some of the times he had known people come together to lament a misguided life, a man on the drink or a woman who had thrown herself away. They were lamenting themselves by proxy, he had thought. For what did those who were sensible have that was so much better? Mortality was incurable, or didn’t they know? Was it better to have a heart like a sewn purse and a life not so much spent as usured into death?

‘Where’s safe?’ he said.

‘London’s safe! Ye comin’?’

‘Ah live here, Frankie.’

‘For how long?’

‘Does anybody know that?’

Frankie took down his drink.

‘Ah’m sorry if Ah helped to put ye in a bad place, Dan. But
Ah’m doin’ the best Ah can to put it right. Ah’m for London. Are ye comin’?’

‘Cheerio, Frankie,’ Dan said and, as Frankie’s face went hurt and he turned away, ‘Hey!’

Frankie turned back, tensed with the memory of that other time he had heard Dan say that. Dan smiled. For he meant the same thing now as he had meant then – give each of us the room to be ourselves – only now he knew what he meant.

‘Ah’ll miss you,’ Dan said.

It was true, not just because he had come back from the dead in Dan Scoular’s mind to offer him at least the chance to share in Frankie’s demented life, such as it was, but because, as everybody did even in spite of themselves, he had helped Dan to a stronger sense of himself, and because he had never acted out of malice, only fear.

‘Good luck wi’ London.’

Frankie nodded and went out. Dan felt more vulnerable for his going. He missed him in that way, too. Frankie’s changeability, once you had accustomed yourself to it, had its own value, in the way that the exact nature of a lie can give you an imaginative fix on the truth. Dan waited, checking the door by which Frankie had left, and then he checked the bar. A couple of people nodded into his wandering look. Everything was normal, even the way that Vince Mabon was shaking his head, as if the world would never get it right. Dan imagined Frankie telling Vince what had happened. He tried not to imagine Vince bringing his cosmic intelligence to bear upon the problem, solving it in seconds. But Vince didn’t make it easy.

‘You’re a mug, Dan,’ Vince said.

‘So tell me what’s new.’

‘You’ve done it all wrong.’

‘What is it wi’ you two?’ Dan said. ‘Sentry duty? When one clocks off, the other clocks on?’

‘You’ve done it all wrong.’

‘How do ye do it right in this place? Ye do whit ye can. The best ye can.’

‘You don’t have the wider view, Dan.’

‘Vince, who does?’

‘Some do.’

‘Very good then.’

‘It’s true. And the rest of us have to reach that higher consciousness.’

‘Vince. There are people around have trouble readin’ the
Daily Record
. Where do they figure in your Utopia? An’ who told you you had “higher consciousness”? Whatever the fuck that is.’

‘I didn’t say I had it.’

‘Then how do you know it’s there?’

‘Of course I know. You recognise it when you see it.’

‘Any chance ye could attach yer mouth to yer brain? Ye judge everybody by what they do with what they’ve got an’ how they cope with the circumstances they have. That’s all. Ye’re not goin’ to ask an illiterate tae read a book. Ah think it’s called context.’

‘No, no. You’re just compounding the problem. You did it wrong, Dan. You don’t attack the individual. You attack the system.’

‘The system. Where does it live? You got an address for it?’

‘The individuals are irrelevant. Change the system, you’ll change the individuals. It’s the only way.’

Dan thought he wouldn’t like to be discussing theory with Vince when the time came to confront Matt Mason.

‘The future,’ Vince said. ‘See you and me, Dan, we don’t matter much. Only what we can contribute to what’s comin’.’

‘Ye’re a slander on life,’ Dan said. He thought of himself and was generous enough not to exempt others from his condition. ‘We’re only even money tae have a future. You don’t like people, Vince. You want to turn them intae ideas. Any future that has to sacrifice the present to get there isny worth goin’ to. Don’t save me a ticket.’

‘Well, one thing I’m sure –’

‘Anybody who’s sure doesn’t know, Vince.’

‘That’s pathetic, Dan.’

‘So fair enough, Vince. Ah’ve got a lot on ma mind. Any chance ye could start yer revolution in the next street? An’ if
ye’re gonny start it, could ye hurry up? Otherwise, Ah’m liable to miss it.’

Vince shrugged and took his pint across to check on one of the domino-tables. Dan watched Vince studying the dominoes as they were laid out, nodding to himself, as if he saw something in their partly accidental sequence that nobody else could see. That was Vince. He was nice enough but he lived inside his mind like an oxygen-tent. Everything had to submit to his conception of it, even the dominoes. It was as though ideas were his element, not air.

That would have been a nice place, inside an idea, but it wasn’t a place to live. It was necessary to live where the idea and the fact collided. He was enjoying a pint and he was threatened with death. And he accepted Vince’s term. He wasn’t heroic, he was pathetic. Having chosen his place, he would struggle to live there as long as he could, by any means. He didn’t want to die. Mortality was incurable. But given the space he had chosen, he would live with the disease as long as he could. If he had the chance, he wanted to die of old age. He was pathetic, but he believed in pathos. He believed in rheumy eyes and incontinence and hallucinations that the brisk middle-aged found quite distressing. He believed in the necessity of embarrassing those who think they know how life should be.

He was going to die. That was all. From the honesty of that admission the rest followed. If you didn’t have control over your own life, you couldn’t presume to have control over anyone else. If you did, you were cheating them of the reality that contained both of you. In the absolute fact of death was his morality.

Immorality lay in the refusal to share in the weakness of everyone, in the preparedness to pretend, for a day or a year or a lifetime, that you were different. It was self-deceit to pretend otherwise. You had to choose not to be victorious and to refuse to be defeated by anything smaller than death. That absolute humility implied a comparative arrogance. Matt Mason fell within the range of that arrogance. Dan Scoular was pathetic but he knew it. Matt Mason was pathetic but he didn’t know it. Dan revelled in his pathos. It was his strength.

When Alistair Corstorphine came up to him and invited him
to next year’s Burns Supper in Liverpool, Dan accepted. Barney Farquharson, a local man, ran a hotel in Liverpool, and every year a busload of Thornbank men went down there for a Burns supper. Dan intended to be around to keep his promise.

But the thought that the future might not be his caused panic in him. Something Frankie White had said about Matt Mason came back and he knew he would live with it like a shadow: ‘He would hide a week in yer coalhouse just to get ye.’ Dan felt the proximity of Matt Mason. He was coming.

As the door of the pub swung, Dan clenched his hands and looked up quickly, knowing who it must be. It was Davie the Deaver. Dan lifted his glass to his mouth carefully, making sure his hand didn’t shake, and took the last of his pint and glanced towards the domino players. Three of them winked like a chorus in slight disharmony.

‘We’ll get ye doon the road when ye’re goin’, Dan?’ Harry Naismith said.