THREE
That summer jobs were hard to come by, but I was so lucky I could turn one down. Dennis Harland described it to me. It would take me out of the country for the whole vacation, and the pay was good. Yet I turned it down. ‘Professor Gracemount mentioned your name,’ Dennis twinkled. And later, ‘I know you’ve never had the chance to be abroad. You’ll find it an invaluable experience.’ Something bloody-minded in me made me refuse. I regretted it at leisure, of course.
When the goalkeeper of the amateur team I played for had his appendix out, he was back fumbling crosses inside three weeks. They wrote a story about him in the local paper. I reckoned I was at least as fit as that and a lot stronger, so to prove something I got myself a summer job as a removal man.
It is important to be in charge of your own life.
We wore aprons with the company’s name and went in and out with chairs and children’s trikes and washing machines. There were old machines plumbed into the kitchens of tenement flats all four of us lifted together. Andy the driver organised – if you felt underneath there were handgrips.
‘I’ve been at this game thirty years,’ Andy said more than once. ‘You’ll get young guys like you built like bulls and half the time they’re knackered. Don’t know how to lift. It’s a knack.’
And he would hold up a kitchen chair balanced by one leg and grin at me through the bars. He was a small man, white headed though he wasn’t more than fifty. As the driver, he organised where stuff went in the van, and packed in extraordinary amounts for he was good – although after a while I got it into my head that his knack ran too much to steering clear of the heaviest work. Of course, I was only the student who would walk away at the end of the summer. Why not pile it on to me? They were probably all at it, and I worried about the ache in my side. I began to match cunning with a bit of cunning – seeming to be busy but avoiding as much of the awkward stuff as I could. That went on until the second man, Davie, spoke to me. He was married and moody tempered.
‘Look ya young bastard,’ he said. We were at the back of the van waiting for Andy to come out of the office. ‘See if you keep this up? Ye’ll get hurt.’
‘What are you on about?’
He was about half my size and not much older than me. He wore what looked like the same green dirty pullover all the time and had a cold most days. I couldn’t see him giving me any trouble.
‘Ye know all right. You’re hell of a fly right enough.’
‘No idea what you’re talking about.’
He squinted at me in the sunlight. A long drop of water sparkled from the end of his nose.
‘Fine. Ye’ll no be bothered about Andy watchan ye then.’
‘That’s up to him, isn’t it? He’s old enough to speak for himself. Till he has a complaint I’ll reckon he’s satisfied.’
Across the sunlight in the yard, we could see him on the other side of the glass chatting up the counter girl. She was blonde and shiny and miniature.
‘He’s taking his time.’
‘Wasting it more like,’ I said. ‘Daft at his age.’
‘Oh, Christ!’ He hawked up a gob of disgusted green slime. ‘You’ve got it all weighed up. That’s a wee ram in there. Magic wi women. He’s had his candle in more candlesticks than you’ve had wet dreams.’
Andy turned away and came out into the yard. Through the glass the little blonde watched him. He winked at us and started over.
Like a rattle ofpeas, words were spat in my ear as we watched him strut towards us at his leisure.
‘Last chance. He’ll no tell ye tae buck up. Ah’ve seen him put folk oot the game. Never prove a thing.’ His voice dropped appreciatively. ‘It’s a knack.’
We were to pick up the fourth man on the way to the job.
‘Told Primo to wait at his corner,’ Andy said.
Primo wasn’t tall but he was broad, broader than anybody I had ever seen in real life. If Andy was not there, he would snatch up one of the monstrous machines all four of us usually handled and take it out on his own. He had arms like a gorilla and never rose to Andy’s baiting, which went on more or less non-stop. I had a theory this was based on professional jealousy – if you were as uncannily strong as that, knack played second fiddle. Primo, Andy called him, or the man mountain.
‘He’d better be there,’ Andy said.
He swung the van out into the traffic. In the cabin you were high up, above the roofs of the cars. A horn brayed under our wheels.
‘He’s no happy,’ I said. ‘You made him stand on his brakes.’
‘Tough.’ He grinned at me. ‘If any of these mugs hit us, they’ll fold like a box o cream buns. And this big sweetheart’ll no even dent.’
He patted the wheel, pleased with himself. He had a very pleasant open manner. I wondered about the four of us on a heavy lift and Andy’s knack telling him when to let go. Racked muscles would be getting off lightly. Broken bones would be likelier.
‘I’m feeling a lot better this morning,’ I said.
‘Oh, aye.’
‘I was feeling rough the last couple of days.’
‘Oh? Keep your eyes peeled, Davie, for the man mountain. He might be hanging oot a window peeling a banana.’
The morose Davie grunted. We were in a street of dilapidated tenements and bricked up windows. Chunks of broken glass glittered light up at the gang slogans. I tried again.
‘I had an operation for my appendix. I thought my side was playing me up.’
‘Stupid job tae take,’ Davie said.
‘I felt good. I suppose I was proving something.’
‘Proving you’re away wi it.’
‘Don’t be hard on the boy,’ Andy said with the same pleasant grin. ‘You were young yourself. Pay him no heed, son. He has his bad days wi being married. She no let you in last night, Davie?’
Davie sniffed the loose water back up his nose.
‘It’s a rotten feeling when ye cannae find the door key. The boy here doesnae know about door keys coming in all sizes. He’s too young. No use taking a yale key tae a big lock.’
‘Give it a rest. Do you never get tired listening to yourself?’
Andy laughed delightedly.
‘There’s Primo,’ I said. ‘At the close mouth.’
‘Typical,’ Andy said. ‘I say the corner so he waits at the close. When they were dishing out brains, he was hiding behind the door.’
The van pulled up on the road side of a row of cars.
‘For God’s sake,’ Andy said, ‘what’s keeping him?’
From the cabin, bright sun shining across the dirty glass, the close beyond Primo was a black tunnel. He looked into it with his back to us, then turned as if at a word and came over.
‘Whit kept ye? What were ye lookan at?’ Andy nagged.
Primo stared at him peaceably.
‘Would you like me tae get a bigger van? This one too wee for ye tae see?’
I had not once heard Primo answer in anger. For Andy and Davie that confirmed him as stupid, but I could not get rid of the image of him trotting down a flight of stairs with a machine two other men would have struggled to lift. He was such a quiet man, though, that you lost sight of that great difference, that gap – and Andy helped, if that was the right way to put it.
‘I don’t know how Primo sticks it,’ I said to Davie. The job was in an old tenement; open stairs with awkward turns and stone steps worn in the centre with a hundred years of trudging down.
‘Bet you the bugger’ll be on the top floor,’ Davie said cheerlessly. Andy had gone up to check.
I lowered my voice. Primo was hunkered down against the wall by the close, easy in the warm sun.
‘I don’t know why he doesn’t tell Andy tae can it.’
‘You frightened of Andy?’
‘Me? He’s been okay wi me.’
He took a watery pull at his nose.
‘Should be.’
‘What? Should be what?’
‘Nothing. Long as you’re happy.’