The Big Man. William McIlvanney
on the pavement like a slightly top-heavy potted plant. Wullie put his hand on Dan’s arm and looked at him with maudlin affection. His words seemed surfacing from the bottom of a very deep pool.
‘Dan. Ah’ll need to see ye in private sometime. A quiet talk.’
‘What is it, Wullie?’
Wullie’s forefinger hovered in front of his own lips like an eyesight test.
‘Personal, Dan. Very personal.’
‘Ye can come to the house anytime, Wullie.’
‘Not suitable, Dan. Anyway, Ah’m not a hundred per cent sure of ma information yet. Let’s leave it the now. But remember. Ah’ve always got your interests at heart. Nobody takes liberties wi’ you on the fly while Ah’m around.’
‘Liberties? In what way, Wullie?’
‘Dan. Let’s leave it there. Enquiries will be made. Meantime, my lips are sealed. Ah’ll be sure before Ah speak. And when Ah am, it’ll be for your ears only.’ He winked. ‘Ah’m your man, Dan Scoular. Ah’m your man.’
The knowledge hadn’t reassured Dan. As he nodded to Frankie White in acknowledgment of his second pint, Dan hoped Wullie’s drunkenly decorous secrecy hadn’t been about Betty. He didn’t know how he could cope with hearing bad things about her. He tried to convince himself it would be about something a lot less important, perhaps that somebody had informed on him to the Inland Revenue for building a garden wall for a man in Blackbrae and not declaring the money he earned for it. It could be that. Wullie Mairshall, who was still only sixty-four but had taken early retirement with his redundancy money two years ago, did gardens in Blackbrae, for some of what Wullie called ‘the big hooses’, and Wullie always talked as much as he delved. He might have heard something.
He hoped, whatever it was, it didn’t impinge too immediately on his family. Being so insecure about himself, he felt an awareness of vulnerability spread to Betty and his children. He feared the susceptibility of Betty to another man. He worried about how his sons were supposed to grow up decent among the shifting values that surrounded them, when he wasn’t sure himself what he stood for any more. Sometimes just the sheer amount of undigested experience they were asked to deal with through watching television troubled him. It seemed to him that at their age his experience had come at him through a filter of shared, accepted values which they perhaps lacked, or which at least had more gaps. Their experience came at them more quickly and they rushed more quickly to meet it.
He remembered Raymond telling him last week about a dream he had had. Raymond was walking in a street alone when he saw a woman lying there. He had known, as you know in dreams without knowing how you know, that she was dead. She was dressed in a skirt and a blouse. ‘Maybe like an office worker,’ Raymond had said. He had knelt over her and noticed blood trickling from the side of her mouth. While he was studying her, he had heard a noise that frightened him. As he glanced up, a creature was running towards him, completely covered in hair. ‘But it was a woman,’ Raymond said. ‘It was an animal. But I knew it was a woman.’ He had tried to run away but she had trapped him against the wall. He had wakened with her about to sink her fanged teeth in his throat.
Dan had explained to Raymond that he thought the dream was just about growing up, about seeing women not as neutral adults but as something sexual. But what had reassured Raymond had troubled Dan. It had told him how much Raymond was growing up, the difficult places he was moving into, and it showed Dan his own time contracting. Whatever significant influence he was still to have on them, whatever coherent message his life was meant to convey, he had better find it quick. He thought of seeing Betty through the window today and knowing how much she meant to him. Whatever love was supposed to be, that was what he felt. But his love was somehow isolated in him, like a genie in a bottle. He had to find the means to release it, to show himself to them as he wanted to be.
He took a sip of his beer and decided that it wasn’t helping. One of the strangers over at the window rose and went through to the lavatory. When Dan turned a little later to see what Frankie White was having, he discovered that Frankie had gone as well. Dan set him up a drink in his absence.
Matt Mason was still urinating by the time Frankie White came through. Frankie took the stall beside him. Matt Mason didn’t look up. He seemed transfixed by the sight of his water.
That’s your man?’
That’s Dan Scoular.’
‘Seems a bit lost in himself.’
‘Ah told ye. He’s got a lot of problems. Who hasn’t around here these days?’
‘Who’s the gonk with the mouth like a megaphone?’
‘Vince Mabon. He’s a student.’
‘Big man likes him, does he?’
‘Dan likes most people. But, aye, he seems to like Vince.’
‘Uh-huh. We can maybe arrange to see how much. The gonk’ll do.’
‘How d’ye mean?’
Matt Mason was finished, waved his penis as if it were a large and cumbersome object. He went across to wash his hands and found no soap. He was fastidiously annoyed. Frankie finished and didn’t bother to wash his hands. He was too preoccupied.
‘How do you mean?’
Matt Mason was rubbing his hands together under the water, which, after testing, he had realised wasn’t hot. He tutted like an old maid. Finished, he made sure the tap was fully turned off and looked round for a towel. He noticed that it was a hot-air hand-dryer.
‘Daft old bastard,’ he muttered. ‘One modern convenience in his place and it’s a bummer.’
He hit the button angrily and felt the hot air play ineffectually on his hands.
‘Whoever invented these,’ he shouted above the noise of the machine, ‘should definitely not get a Nobel Prize.’
Standing amid the smell of his own urine, Frankie White suddenly realised where they were. Like a bank robber who has had his pocket picked, he felt outraged. The feeling gave him the courage to shout at Matt Mason above the sound.
‘No, no. Wait a minute. We don’t need any wee tests. Ah’ve told you what the man can do. That’s not what Ah thought the night was about.’
Matt Mason was turning his hands back and forward in the heat.
‘Come on, Matt! We don’t need this.’
Suddenly, the machine shut itself off. Frankie White cringed from the sound of his own voice. Matt Mason was rubbing the fingers of each hand on the palms, dissatisfied. Without warning, he leaned across and dried them on Frankie’s jacket.
‘I’m not a punter,’ he said. ‘I’m a bookie. Always check the odds.’ He turned at the door. ‘But it’s okay. I’ve warned Billy it’s a fair fight.’
He went back through to the bar. Frankie hung about for a moment until he admitted to himself that there was nothing he could do but follow. Going back to his whisky, he saw the scene begin to move under its own impetus, as if he had accidentally hit the start-button of a machine he didn’t know how to stop. Matt Mason was nodding to Billy Fleming. Billy Fleming lifted his pint and began to finish it.
‘We’ll never get anywhere,’ Vince Mabon was saying, ‘through the parliamentary system. It’s a set-up. The game’s rigged. Look at the last time. They brainwashed the public with a lotta lies.’
Billy Fleming walked up to the bar.
‘A pint of heavy,’ he said.
Preoccupied, Alan reached for the empty glass and made to put the next pint in it.
‘You not got two glasses, like?’ Billy Fleming said.
‘Sorry.’
Alan lifted a fresh glass and started to fill it.
‘I’m