— She’d like that, Frank.
The funeral is followed by a reception in a hotel on Leith Links. People come up to him, many of them barely recognisable as old acquaintances. Gavin Temperley has ballooned. — Pittin oan the Coral, Gav, Franco observes playfully.
— Good livin, Temperley smiles back with a faintly suppressed air of desperation.
Then another voice in his ear, hesitant and cagey. — Awright, Franco. .
He turns to see a thin and haggard man, with a greasy mop of sandy-grey hair, under which sit two large dark eyes with a dull sheen, set far back into a face of ghostly pallor. — Awright. . Franco warily responds. — How’s it gaun?
— Ye see it aw, Franco.
Spud Murphy looks so old and wizened to him that if he hadn’t spoken Franco wouldn’t have been able to confirm his identity. — Cannae be as bad as that, surely!
A gallows smile pushes Spud’s features into some kind of animation. Then they tumble south again. — Sorry aboot Sean. It’s a bad toon, Franco. Aw changed. A bad toon now, likesay, Spud warns.
Franco nods, as that couldn’t really be disputed. All towns have their bad sides; this one is no worse or better than any other. In California, they lived only a few miles away from where a film director’s privileged son had recently gone on a rampage, shooting people dead because he couldn’t get his hole. Thank fuck they don’t have guns here, he thinks mischievously, looking at poor Spud. Despite its movie representation, militaristic foreign policy and creeping racism, he finds America generally such a mannered place compared to here, but then they let lunatics buy guns, and that could change everything.
Over Spud’s shoulder, he can see June, still tearful, being comforted by Olivia, with Michael looking on, seeming almost nonchalant. Franco feels a strange reverberation coming from deep inside him. Breathe. .
One. . two. . three. . who are we. .
To think that this was once his family, and these were once his bosom buddies. He contemplates Mel and Grace and Eve, trying to isolate details of their faces as they slither through his mind, their friends Ralph and Juan, and even his in-laws and his agent, Martin, back in the sun of California. And they call this grey place Sunny Leith. It was bizarre. Life often seemed like a meaningless joke. You either got the custard pie in the face, or you got to giggle at those who did. — Right enough, Spud, Franco almost bellows, fighting back a gurgling laugh.
As the drinks kick in, so the procession of old lags from all over town sidling up to him, full of conspiratorial talk in jailbird whispers, grows exponentially. The inanities and the exhortations to violence, most regarding vengeance against Anton Miller, are almost overwhelming. He feels the bleakness crawling into his skull. Franco breathes in steadily, trying to tune it all out. That pressure on your brain. Eroding focus. Diverting the flow of thought down old, ruinous neural canals. He is thinking of his heads of actors, and specific mutilations on them. Of his canvases, those attic versions of Dorian Gray, drenched in blood red. He keeps his eye on Frances Flanagan, and is almost pleased when Elspeth and Greg come over to rescue him. — There’s a boy from the local paper here, a crime reporter, Elspeth informs him.
— Disgusting that they won’t leave a family alone to grieve, Greg muses, looking at the reporter, ruddy of face and grubby of dress, who stands alone in a corner. Then he turns to a group of youths, who have been stealing glances at Franco.
Frank Begbie has registered this too, deciding that at least some of them had to be mobbed up with Anton Miller. He might not be here but he would still see everything that went on. — Aye, he agrees.
— Hmm. Greg takes another glimpse at the young team. — Do you think there’s a danger that you might be seen as a hero by some young kids around here?
Franco gives a matter-of-fact shake of his shoulders. — I am a hero to some young kids around here, he says, pausing to look at Elspeth. — I was a hero to my son and I was never there for him. Now he’s in a grave at twenty-one. And I’ll no be here for anybody else’s son either.
Greg sees his wife’s eyebrows arch towards the ceiling in dismay.
Terry is chatting to some members of the young team. Franco watches as he jokes easily with them, all the time drawing their girlfriends into the conversation, eliciting giggles as he then ignores the boys. The young team are keeping away from Tyrone, who stands at the bar, a brooding vengeful aspect hanging around his big shoulders like a cloak. And he is with Nelly, Franco’s old buddy, who studiously avoids him. He is about to go over and say hello, and perhaps offer some kind of apology to Tyrone, when suddenly Larry is back in his face. — So, Franco, what’s changed about Scotland, then?
— Cunts still have bad teeth, drink too much, take too many drugs. . he looks over at Tyrone, — they’ve got fatter. That’s what’s changed.
Larry’s face creases in a grin. — Like they’ve no goat fat cunts in the States? It was thaim that started aw this fat-cunt shite!
— Aye, it’s a global problem now, Franco smiles, noting that one thing about Larry was that people avoided him. Elspeth and Greg, for example, who have sloped off across the room. He has his uses.
— Too right, Larry argues. — They say three hundred million Chinkies are obese these days. That’s nearly mair obese Chinkies than Americans ay aw sizes. That means a lot ay shite grub’s gittin scranned. Ye dinnae git that wey on a handfay ay rice!
— Heard Chinese Democracy?
— Thaire’s nae democracy in China.
— Naw, it’s an album, Guns n’ Roses.
— Nup.
— Check it oot. Comes highly recommended.
— Right. . So how’s life in California then, Frank?
Frank Begbie looks over at a couple of old adversaries. One is Cha Morrison from Lochend, who originated from the stair next to the one June now lives in. With a fistful of sovies closing round a beer glass, he looks like the cat that got the cream. It is, he reflects, something of a result for Cha; he gets to laugh at Sean’s demise while drinking the booze his father, a long-term rival, has paid for. — Been enjoying it, but there’s something missing, he considers. — Like a war.
— Funny wee temperature in this room, Larry acknowledges.
Frank Begbie remembers that Larry was once a victim of Cha Morrison’s blade; his assailant did time for it. He feels his pulse starting to race. He makes himself breathe slowly and evenly, in through his nose, out through his mouth. Even. Stay even. The best time to hit somebody is when they are drawing in a breath.
— Awright, Frank? Larry asks.
There follows an ominous lull in energy, like on the dance floor of a busy nightclub, just before the DJ is about to drop that track that will send the floor crazy. And he realises that he is the DJ. They are all looking to him to drop the tune. To swing the fist or boot, to throw the glass, to launch the headbutt, or even the blood-curdling scream across the room, that will set the place alight. — They always say ‘listen tae your gut reaction’, Franco says softly. — If I listened tae my gut reaction, not one cunt in this room would be breathing, he smiles cheerfully. — And that wouldnae be good, he says, looking across at Frances Flanagan.
— It’s Miller, that Anton Miller, Frank, Larry declares. Franco scents the fumes of drink on his breath, reckons that he is approaching that jakey loop, where he will make the same point over and over again. — He was in and oot ay that flat. Sean owed him, and he didnae like him hinging aboot wi wee hairy there. He nods over at Frances, who stares at a row of full wine glasses on the table. — Mark ma words, Miller’s the one.