The Burn (11 page)

Peter knelt by the guy. He was still alive, his forehead warm and the tick at the temple, a faint pulsing. But should he drag him into a close-mouth No, of course not, plus best to leave him or
else

but the guy was on his back and that was not good. Peter laid down his brush and did the life-saving twist, he placed the man’s right arm over his left side, then raised and placed his
right leg also over his left side, then gently pulled the left leg out a little, again gently, shifting the guy’s head, onto the side: and now the guy would breathe properly without the risk
of choking on his tongyou. And he would have to leave it at that. It wisni cold so he wouldni die of frostbite. Leave it. You’ll be alright son, he whispered and for some reason felt like
kissing him on the forehead, a gesture of universal love for the suffering. We can endure, we can endure. Maybe it was a returning prophet to earth, and this was the way he had landed, on the crown
of his skull and done a flaky. He laid his hand on the guy’s shoulder. Ah you’ll be right as rain, he said, and he got up to go. He would be though, he would be fine, you could tell,
you could tell just by looking; and Peter was well-versed in that. Yet fuck sake if he hadni of known how to properly move the guy’s body then he might have died, he couldve choked to death.
My god but life is so fragile; truly, it is.

And he was seen. The pair of eyes watching. The gaffer was across the street. The game’s a bogie. He looked to be smiling. He hated Peter so that would be the case quite clearly.

Come ower here!

Peter had walked a couple paces by then and he stopped, he looked across the road. Guiseppe Robertson was the gaffer’s name. Part of his hatred for Peter was straightforward, contained in
the relative weak notion of ‘age’; the pair of them were of similar years and months down even to weeks perforce days and hours – all of that sort of shite before you get to the
politics. Fucking bastirt. Peter stared back at him. Yeh man hey, Robertson was grinning, he was fucking grinning. Ace in the hole and three of them showing. Well well well.

Come ower here! he shouted again.

He wasnt kidding. Yeh. Peter licked his lips. He glanced sideways, the body there and still prone; Robertson seemed not to have noticed it yet. He glanced back at him and discovered his feet
moving, dragging him across the road. Who was moving his fucking feet. He wasnt, it had to be someone in the prime position.

The gaffer was staring at him.

I’m sorry, said Peter.

It doesni matter about fucking sorry man you shouldni have left the job.

I had to go a place.

You had to go a place . . . mmhh; is that what you want on record?

Aye.

The gaffer grinned: You’ve been fun out and that’s that.

As long as you put it on record.

Ah Peter Peter, so that’s you at last, fucking out the door. It’s taken a while, but we knew we’d get ye.

You did.

We did, aye, true, true true true, aye, we knew you’d err. So, you better collect the tab frae the office this afternoon.

Peter gazed at him, he smiled. Collect my tab?

Yes, you’re finished, all fucking washed up, a jellyfish on the beach, you’re done, you’re in the process of evaporating. The gaffer chuckled. Your services, for what
they’re worth, are no longer in demand by the fathers of the city.

That’s excellent news. I can retire and grow exotic plants out my window boxes.

You can do whatever the fuck you like son.

Ah, the son, I see. But Guiseppe you’re forgetting, as a free man, an ordinary civilian, I can kick fuck out you and it’ll no be a dismissable offence against company property.

Jovial, very jovial. And obviously if that’s your wish then I’m the man, I’m game, know what I mean, game, anywhere you like Peter it’s nomination time.

The two of them stared at each other. Here we have a straightforward hierarchy. Joe Robertson the gaffer and Peter the sweeper.

Fuck you and your services, muttered Peter and thereby lost the war. This was the job gone. Or was it, maybe it was just a battle: Look, said Peter, I’ve no even been the place yet I was
just bloody going, I’ve no even got there.

You were just bloody going!

Aye.

You’ve been off the job an hour.

An hour? Who fucking telt ye that?

Never you mind.

There’s a guy lying ower there man he’s out the game.

So what?

I just bloody saved his life!

Robertson grinned and shook his head: Is that a fact!

That means I’ve just to leave him there?

Your job’s taking care of the streets, he’s on the fucking pavement.

Mmhh, I see.

It was on the streets, past tense.

Aw for fuck sake man look I’m sorry! And that was as far as he was going with this charade, no more, no more.

It doesni fucking matter about sorry, it’s too late.

It’ll no happen again yr honour . . . Peter attempted a smile, a moment later he watched the gaffer leave, his bowly swagger, taking a smoke from his pocket and lighting it as he went.
Death. The latest legislation. Death. Death death death. Death. Capital d e a

He continued to watch the gaffer until he turned the corner of Moir Street.

Well there were other kinds of work. They were needing sellers of a variety of stuff at primary-school gates. That was a wheeze. Why didnt he get in on that. My god, it was the coming thing.
Then with a bit of luck he could branch out on his own and from there who knows, the whole of the world was available. Peter cracked himself on the back of the skull with such venomous force Aouch
that he nearly knocked it off Aouch he staggered a pace, dropped his brush and clutched his head. O for fuck sake christ almighty but it was sore. He recovered, stopped to retrieve the brush.

It was bloody sore but christ that was stupid, bloody stupid thing to do, fucking eedjit – next thing he would be cutting bits out his body with a sharp pointed knife, self-mutiliation,
that other saviour of the working classes. O christ but the head was still nipping! My god, different if it knocked some sense into the brains but did it did it fuck.

Who had shopped him? Somebody must have. Guiseppe wouldni have been so cocky otherwise. One of the team had sold him out for a pocket of shekels; that’s the fucking system boy no more
street-sweeping for you. Yes boy hey, he could do anything he liked. Peter smiled and shook his head. He glanced upwards at the heavy grey clouds. He felt like putting on a shirt and tie and the
good suit, and get Carol, and off they would go to a nightclub, out wining and dining the morning away. He liked nightshift. Nightshift! It was a beautiful experience. My god Robertson I’d
love to fucking do you in boy that’s what I would fucking like. But he had no money and he was eighteen years short of the pension. And he was not to lose control. That was all he needed. The
whole of life was out to get you. There’s a sentence. But it’s true, true, the whole of life. Who had shopped him but for fuck sake what dirty bastirt had done the dirty, stuck the evil
eye on him, told fucking Robertson the likely route. Och, dear. I had a dream, I had a dream, and in this dream a man was free and could walk tall, he could walk tall, discard the brush and hold up
the head, straightened shoulders and self-respect:

the guy was still lying there.

Ohhh. A whisky would be nice, a wee dram. Peter carried a hipflask on occasion but not tonight, he didnt have it tonight. Ohhh. He paused, he stared over the road, seeing the guy in that
selfsame position. Perhaps he was dead, perhaps he had died during the tiff with the gaffer. Poor bastard, what was his story, we’ve all got them, we’ve all got them.

Morning has
bro-ken.

Of course Margaret wasnt the sort of woman you trusted. She had that way of looking at you as if she was wondering how she was going to con you this time and if she could just
take it for granted she would get away with it or else did she have to work out methods of escape afterwards. It put you on your guard. And I mean everybody, even the paperboy or the milkboy, when
they came to collect the money at the end of the week, they were wary as well. You couldnt help watching her. Even if you were talking to somebody else, if you were standing somewhere where she
was, if you were talking to somebody, in the post office for instance, you were always watching her at the same time, so that your eyes might meet and she could go surprised, a bit taken aback, as
if she was having to think to herself ‘Did he see me there?’ but then she would give a wee self-possessed smile and you would give her one back. It was funny the way she managed it,
because the truth is she would have won as far as that particular exchange is concerned. And if ever she had to actually say something it would nearly always be a ‘What was that?’ and
this made you know she hadnt been listening to a word you said, this because she rated you so low there was nothing at all you could say would ever interest her, whereas probably you thought she
had been waiting for you to speak to her all the time. It wasnt easy being in her company and you were always glad to see the back of her, I mean relieved. But it didnt dawn on me she had
disappeared till a long time after – I mean when you told me about it, about how she hadnt been around for a while, it hadnt dawned on me.

O mirs! And a slice of square sausage please!

Beg pardon?

I squinted at her. A slice of square sausage – she didnt have any idea what I was rabbiting on about. A piece of absentmindedness, I had forgotten I was in fucking England. But too late
now and impossible to pretend I only said ‘sausage’ and that maybe she had misheard the first bit, something to do with ‘air’ or ‘bare’ maybe,
‘scare’, ‘fare’ – sausages are excellent fare I could have said but structured as excellent fare sausages, although the strange syntax would probably have thrown
her.

Square sausage? She was frowning, but not unkindly, not hostilely, not at all, this lass of not quite tender years.

It’s a delicacy of Scotland.

You what . . .

It’s actually a delicacy, a flat slice of sausagemeat approximately 2 inches by 3, the thickness varying between an eighth of an inch and an inch . . . making the movements with both my
hands to display the idea more substantially.

The girl thinking I am mad or else kidding her on in some unfathomable but essentially snobby and elitist way. It’s fine, I said, just give me one of your English efforts, these long fat
things you stuff full of bread and water – gaolmeat we call them back where I come from!

She was still bewildered but now slightly impatient.

Glasgow sausage manufacturers could earn themselves a fortune down here eh! Ha ha.

Yeh, she said, and walked off to the kitchen to pass in my order.

But at least she had answered when spoken to and not left me high and dry. When you think about it, imagine having to take part in such a ridiculous conversation! And yet this is how so many
parties have to earn a living. One time I was aboard a public omnibus and dozing; it was a nice afternoon and the rays from the good old sun streaming in the window there. An elderly chap of some
seventy or so summers sat nearby. The bus was fairly empty. The driver, a rather brusque sort of bloke I have to confess, and taking it slowly in an obvious attempt at not gaining time. At one
point he stopped altogether and applied the handbrake and he sat there gazing ahead, his elbows resting on the steering wheel. Suddenly the elderly chap turns at me and he has to lean
threequartersway across the damn aisle so you thought he was going to fall off his seat! He gesticulates out the window in the direction of a grocer cum newsagent shop. You see that there, he says,
that shop there, he says, you see it?

Yep.

Well there used to be a cigarette machine stood there, right outside the door.

Is that right?

Aye. He nodded, giving a loud sniff of the nose, then sat back again without further ado. From the way he had performed the whole thing he was obviously a nonsmoker. But even this deduction is a
boring try at producing something not so boring from something that is utterly beyond the defining pale even as a straight piece of abject boredom. If the old fellow had simply leaned over the
aisle and whispered: Cigarette machines . . . just starkly and in a low growling voice and left it at that, well, I would still at this very moment in my life be incredibly interested in just what
precisely the full set of implications

The lass returns the lass returns!

Tea or coffee?

Tea please; and make it two thanks, one just now and one during. Mirs, the age of sauce the age of sauce!

She did not reply to that last bit though, mainly because I managed to stop myself saying it out loud thank the Lord.

He didnt want to start in on something else; he didnt; and it was very important that he didnt; it was in the nature of things, being quite close to dying, which was what he
was wanting, he was wanting to die, quite soon, he didnt want to wait too long. It was not something he was taking pains to conceal either. How the hell should he? Let it out into the open air,
right into the atmosphere and let them see; let it all out and just let them see and then they could know and maybe understand, if that was ever possible but he doubted it. It made his breathing
come shallower and it rasped, thinking about how they took it. All of them. So let them just know about it. Not to hide any of it. Nothing.