‘Oh, is that what you do? We’re just building the trellis. Give the roses room to grow. Rambling roses.’
‘Hm.’
‘Do yourself a favour, Jack. Don’t try to be clever about it. Just come and listen.’
‘I’ll see if I can manage.’
‘Anyway, you’re not here to write a preview. Are you?’
‘I want to find Melanie McHarg,’ I said.
‘Melanie Who?’
‘Do yourself a favour, Marty. Don’t try to be clever about it.’
We sipped our drinks and smiled at each other and Marty looked round the room.
‘Ah’ve met her,’ he said. ‘Of course, Ah have. So what?’
‘So where is she?’
‘Ah’ve met Thelonius Monk, too. Ye want me to tell ye where he is?’
‘You could save that for later. I want to find her, Marty.’
‘Good luck. If Ah was her, ye wouldn’t find me. She’s had enough troubles lately. Ah’d be off an’ runnin’.’
‘But you’re one of the places she would run, are you not?’
‘Not known at this address,’ he said. ‘Ah’ll have to get back to the clarinet.’
‘Before you do,’ I said.
I could see Brian Harkness and Bob Lilley laughing and nodding at something they were talking about. Ricky was standing against the counter, reading a newspaper. The jazz-group in the rehearsal-room was making aural shapes I didn’t recognise. In those three mysterious preoccupations, I felt how the meaning of things withholds itself and hides among the endless banality of its proliferations. I sensed that, if this moment, too, were allowed to pass without revealing its small cache, the truth Betty Scoular knew was there might never be declared. The only pressure I could put on Marty was the truth. He would have outmanoeuvred anything else.
‘The reason I want to talk to her. It seems obvious that Matt Mason wiped out Meece Rooney. It looks as if he also killed another man. About three months ago. Melanie could help us get at Matt Mason. Ah think she might also help herself. She must be trying to come to terms with her past. And see if there’s a future. Maybe if she stopped just being the victim of her life. The way it looks as if she has been. And started to pay it back. Make it take on a shape she gives it. Maybe that would help her. I think they call it rehabilitation.’
I hoped the social worker’s instincts weren’t quite dead in Marty. He looked through me, as if he were checking my file for trustworthiness.
‘What way could she help?’ he said.
‘I’ve got an idea. Something she could do for us.’
‘What would that be?’
‘That would be for me to ask. And for her to decide yes or no. Not for you to decide, Marty.’
‘You goin’ to put pressure on her?’
‘There would be no pressure. Just ask her and let her make up her mind.’
‘She’s tryin’ to come off it cold turkey, ye know. She’s not in great shape. The way she is, a twig droppin’ on her be like a fallin’ tree. Timber. You’d have to leave it entirely up to her.’
‘That would be the deal.’
‘Ah’ll see.’
He finished his Jack Daniels.
‘See quick, Marty,’ I said. ‘Time’s short here.’
‘It’s shorter than you think,’ Marty said. ‘Melanie’s leavin’ for Canada tomorrow.’
‘Then let me talk to her today.’
He thought about it. He shook his head.
‘No way. That way we narrow her choice. She might feel pressured into it. What Ah will do. Ah’ll see her tonight. Ah’ll speak to her. Ah’ll let ye know if she wants to meet you. That’s it.’
‘It’s maybe not enough. It doesn’t leave us a lot of space for fancy footwork. I can’t see her till tomorrow?’
‘Jack. Maybe you can’t see her at all. How do Ah get in touch?’
I gave him my room number at the hotel. As an afterthought, I also gave him Jan’s telephone number. Going back to rehearsal, he turned.
‘Oh and, Jack,’ he said. ‘Don’t try to put a tail on me, eh?’
‘Who would I get to do the job?’ I said. ‘Your shadow’s got trouble keeping up with you.’
I joined Brian and Bob at their table. The vagueness of my arrangement with Marty didn’t impress them. It didn’t impress me much either. The music reflected the continuing uncertainty of where I was — all the disparate elements I had tried to bring together still hadn’t fused, were still looking for the timing and inter-connection that would make them cohere. Jan was a part of that uncertainty. Where had I found the arrogance to give Marty her phone-number? I didn’t know what she had decided. Maybe after dinner tonight I’d be lucky to reach her by postcard.
32
There are public places on which our private lives have an imaginative freehold, because of their associations. La Bona Sospira was one of mine. It was where Jan and I had our first meal together. We had gone back often since then.
You came in, through a narrowly unimpressive frontage, to what wasn’t so much a bar as an ante-room to the restaurant. I had always enjoyed that room. It was like a bridge between two cultures. You stepped in off a Glasgow street and the room said: okay, you’re Scottish and you want a drink, you have a drink; but we’re Italian and any drink you have here is just a prelude to some serious food. The gantry was minute, telling you not to get excited. The decor was banal but so what? Bring your own dreams and any place is special.
This was where I had brought a few of mine. Tonight I wasn’t sure if they could live here any longer. I was nervous about meeting Jan. I loved her and I needed her and I thought she loved me but I didn’t think I was what she needed. That worried me because, many romantic fictions notwithstanding, most people will eventually go with what they need, not what they want. Think of Meece Rooney. That’s why drug-dealers do so well.
I sat down at one of what I had always assumed were beaten brass tables. I hardly know one metal from another. But I had always assumed they were beaten brass. I felt vague about myself. Guido turned up, as Guido often had.
‘Jacko,’ he said. ‘It’s nice to see you.’
‘Nice to be here, Guido.’
‘The glorious Jan will be here soon?’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘I bring the menus. But, first, I bring a drink. We have a little of the Antiquary.’ The third syllable seemed to go on a long time. ‘This for you?’
‘That’s great. Marcella’s well?’
‘Marcella is too well. She’s so strong, it frightens me.’
Guido went away and came back and brought two menus and a stubby glass of the Antiquary and a jug of water. I had left the car at the hotel. I topped the glass up with water.
I looked at a menu. The food was inventive but so were the prices. I had once suggested this connection to Guido but I wouldn’t do it again.
‘You want Volvo,’ he had said, ‘you buy Volvo. You want Alfa Romeo, you pay for Alfa Romeo.’
The problem was, I reflected, I had for a long time been paying for Alfa Romeos I couldn’t afford. My finances were a disaster. My one piece of luck in that area was that Freddie, my landlord, was someone I had known for years. The rent he charged for the flat was ridiculously cheap. Beyond that, all was crisis. Once I had set aside what was for Ena and the children, the rest was carrion money, just there to feed the vultures. They had been constantly circling for some time now and my cunning plan had always been to ignore them. When I finally collapsed in a heap of putrefying debts, they would no doubt come and get me. In the meantime, just keep running.
I was starting on my whisky as Jan came in. I had just kissed her, tasting the coolness of the evening on her cheek, when Guido arrived like a heat-directed missile that only homed in on women. His small rotundity surrounded her. He buried her in facile compliments, which Jan received delightedly. I suppose if someone is showering you with flowers, it would be churlish to notice that they’re plastic.
I had to admit that she was due some compliments. As Guido elaborately unveiled her, taking her grey woollen coat like a gigantic matador’s cloak, she stood in a plain, tight, black dress that declared every pore to be perfectly in place. She sat down and the area around the table brightened.