Almost immediately upon setting off, however, negotiating the corner at the Sealscraig, I saw that not quite everyone was closed up for the funeral after all. I caught a flash of light from the corner of my eye and, turning, I saw that there was a solitary drinker in Brown’s Bar and that Mr Shinie Brown was standing at the counter facing him. The light I had seen was the flare of a match as the customer lit a cigarette and when he turned to the side to blow the first smoke politely over his shoulder, I recognized him as one of the two Burry Man’s boys.
This was, at the same time, both strange beyond reckoning and also too good to miss. In fact, its strangeness only made it the more irresistible for there had to be a story behind this ostentatious absence from the send-off, surely. The only question was whether I could summon the nerve to cross the threshold, alone this time, join a strange man at the bar, and strike up the conversation necessary to find out what the story was.
To excuse ducking out of it, I could tell myself that Alec would be able to grill the other helper at the funeral or afterwards. On the other hand, there was no guarantee of this; Alec after all was relying on Cad being able to pick the face out of the crowd or, failing that, being able to ask around discreetly for an introduction. Imagine his disgust if he missed the man or could not get him to talk and then he heard that I had let this other one slip through my grasp out of sheer… I did not even know for sure what one would call it.
I put my gloved fingers firmly around the brass handle of the door and pulled it open. Mr Brown had disappeared into the back room while I was dithering, and only the man at the bar remained. He spoke, without turning, saying:
‘He’s no’ open.’
‘Oh!’ I said, flustered, and on hearing my voice the man turned around in some surprise.
‘It’s yoursel’,’ he said, obviously remembering me from our first encounter.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. (I have never been able to decide exactly how one should respond to this particular greeting.) ‘And I’m not really looking to buy a drink. I’m just… Well, to tell the truth, I was out for a walk and then seeing the street so quiet and realizing why, I’m looking for cover. It would be pretty blatant to parade along the High Street and then roar off in my motor car.’ I had joined him at the bar during this speech and he was nodding slowly in apparent understanding, but he was – I could see this now that I was close up – extremely drunk. As if to confirm the fact, he gave a huge wuthering sigh and sank his head to his chest with lips pushed out.
‘What brings you here?’ I asked, rather too brightly. He did not answer. ‘I should have thought you’d be up at the Kirk. Mr Brown too, for that matter.’
‘We’ve no’ been introduced,’ said the man, swinging to face me. I had to work hard not recoil from the beer fumes on his breath, and almost found myself offering him a peppermint. ‘Pat Rearden,’ he said, and held out a hand. I shook it faintly, wondering at the non sequitur, then I realized that it was not a non sequitur after all.
‘I see,’ I said. ‘What a shame. How awful for you, I mean, if you were great friends.’
‘We were friends,’ he announced, much more belligerently than was needed since he was, after all, agreeing with me. ‘Rab and me. We didnae give a – didnae care what folk said. And we aye kent that if he went first I’d be sittin’ in a bar and if it wis me he’d be sittin’ in a bar. Load o’ bloody nonsense.’
‘Hear, hear,’ I answered. ‘As someone else said just the other day in another context: we’re all Jock Tamson’s bairns.’
‘We are,’ said Mr Rearden, thumping the bar. ‘We are that. You nivver said a truer word.’
‘What about Mr Brown? Why isn’t he there?’ I said. He looked blank. ‘ Shinie?’ I prompted.
‘Same as me,’ said Mr Rearden shaking his head morosely. ‘Just the same as me. Father Cormack would have his guts for garters if he crossed the door. And it’s worse for him. Fur Shinie. He’s practically ane o’ the family.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘So it wasn’t another context after all. It was exactly the same context. Ah well, Miss Brown seems to have been a staunch support to Mrs Dudgeon in the last few days nevertheless.’
‘Should have been ane o’ the family,’ said Rearden again, threatening real tears now. ‘That f-… bloody war.’ I nodded, sympathetically. ‘Left all of us old men whae’d lived wur lives and took the boys.’ He gave a rough sob, and I patted his arm. ‘And their boys were like brothers from they were laddies,’ he said, echoing what Mrs Dudgeon’s sisters had told me.
‘Yes, so I believe,’ I said. ‘They joined up together, didn’t they?’
‘Aye, the Black Watch,’ said Rearden. ‘Rab Dudgeon’s laddie was a’ for the King’s Own Borderers, but Billy got his way for once and the Royal Highlanders it was.’
‘For once?’ I said.
‘The usual thing o’ it was that the Dudgeon laddie said jump and Billy did the jumpin’.’
‘I had heard it was the other way round,’ I said.
‘Oh?’ said Rearden. ‘Ye’d have heard that from them, right? That would be whit they were sayin’.’
I smiled, acknowledging the point.
‘How impossible for Joey, in that case, then,’ I said. ‘Guilt as well as grief.’
‘Shinie’s boy was lost an’ all, ye ken,’ said Rearden. ‘Her brother.’ This I had not known, although it was hardly startling news. ‘Missin’ presumed,’ he went on. ‘Jist like wee Rab. And ye’d think it could have brought them closer, eh? Would ye no’? Would ye no’ think that?’ He glared at me until I nodded, agreeing with him on who knows what. ‘They nivver talked aboot it,’ said Rearden. ‘Not one word a’ these years, the both o’ them.’
‘Mr and Mrs Dudgeon didn’t?’ I said. ‘Or Joey and Mr Brown? Didn’t talk about what?’
‘Shinie and Rab,’ said Rearden. ‘Both o’ the laddies gone and they nivver once sat doon and had a dram together. We tried. Bringing him in here. Doing the old routine wi’ Joey. Cannae say we nivver tried. Look up there,’ he commanded suddenly, pointing a wavering finger to the row of bottles behind the bar. ‘See that? Does that no’ break yer heart?’ I looked along the row, but saw nothing that could be called heartbreaking except to Mr Turnbull or another of his Temperance chums. ‘Where is it?’ Rearden was muttering to himself. ‘Where is it away to?’ He tried to focus, slapping a hand over one eye and slowly tracing a pointing finger along in mid-air in line with the shelf. ‘That bottle there – it’s up there somewhere – that bottle o’ malt is fur the laddie. Eh? Kept there fur the laddie comin’ hame and naeb’dy else is let lay a finger on it.’ His voice was throbbing with emotion again, and as mawkish as this was in one way, it was hard not to get a little lump in one’s throat at the thought of Mr Brown keeping a bottle of special whisky, saved against the homecoming of his beloved son, who lay buried under the soil somewhere in France, too horribly mutilated even to identify and send home to his father.
‘Shinie!’ Rearden bellowed, all of a sudden, as loud as a gun going off in my ear. I yelped. ‘Here, Shinie! Where’s yer laddie’s drink away tae? Aye well,’ he said in a quieter voice, to me. ‘He’s mebbes put it behind him at last. I mind once a year or two back he took it doon and had done wi’ it. But then back it came. Shinie?’