Laidlaw saw a middle-aged fat man eating with a young woman. He wondered what Gus was seeing.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Gus said. ‘No wonder old Tony got angry.’
‘How?’
‘Look at him.’
‘It’s a fat man eating his dinner. What’s he supposed to do? Shove the food in his ears?’
‘You don’t see it?’
‘But I’m keen to learn. Tell me what you see, visionary.’
‘He’s just a bag of appetites, isn’t he? He’s lookin’ at her as if she’s next for eating. If he could pickle the world, he would swallow it.’
Laidlaw had to admit to himself he knew what Gus meant. The man had achieved that physical grossness you sometimes see, not just a matter of size. It was as if whatever alchemy it is that transmutes our hungers into an identity had broken down and he was left like a bulk container for all he had taken in. Laidlaw could understand how one of the idealistic young might see him as a slander on the species.
‘You’re not so far from Tony yourself, young Gus.’
‘In what way?’
‘You’re down with the galloping idealism. Your dreams are so pure, reality has no chance. You’ve got a kind of graffiti of the eyes. Most things you look at, you vandalise.’
‘Don’t compare me to Tony. I’m a Marxist.’
‘Is that why you have to sauce your meal with contempt for all the capitalists in the room? To make it edible?’
‘I want to stay true to my ideals.’
‘So did Tony. He was gang-banged by ideals, poor bastard. Mind you, no wonder he fell into their arms. It’s raining shite here every day. Everywhere he looked, he saw lavvies posing as temples. So he tried to idealise them out of existence. But that’s a bad mistake.’
‘So what’s that got to do with me?’
‘Well, I think you’re eventually on the same side. I think there are two main badnesses where we live. One’s kind of total cynicism. Using other people. Reducing them to objects because you can find nothing to believe in but yourself. That’s crime in all its multifarious forms, most of them legal. The other’s the determined ideal that won’t learn from experience. The need to be God’s relative. I think they’re twins. Bastard twins. The only legitimate thing we have is human experience. The possibility of the difference of tomorrow. The unimaginable difference. Unpreconceived. That requires the ability to entertain real doubt. I think Tony wanted certainty. I think maybe he died of the want of it. I hope to go on living. I think the key to that is knowing you don’t know.’
Gus sipped some Frascati.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘But maybe you’re making my point. You quoted Marx there. Or didn’t you know? The reduction of people to objects. That’s capitalism.’
‘That’s true. It’s also Marxism. It’s a wee bit disingenuous of Marx to restrict that definition to capitalism. It’s what he was on about as well. Or didn’t you know? What’s Marxism but ideological capitalism? He’s middle-class, of course. As far as wanting experience goes, more balls on a bumbee.’
‘Come on, polisman. Marx is middle-class?’
‘So was Lenin. Handed the revolution over to a caucus of intellectuals. Freedom involves the right to envision itself.’
Gus sneered over a forkful of fish, dismissing him. Laidlaw was smiling.
But the issues raised gave them a cubicle of preoccupation within the room. Another bottle of Frascati and a lot of argument later, they had achieved that heightened mutual awareness some discussions generate, a sense of the never-to-be repeated specialness of the collision they were having. Without either mentioning it specifically, it seemed natural to go on.
38
A laughing baby boy
One evening in his play
Disturbed the household with his noisy glee.
Well, I told him to keep quiet
But he soon would disobey.
He needed just a gentle word from me.
‘How often is he gonny play that Hank Snow record?’ Tich asked. ‘Ma gums are bleedin’.’
‘I like it,’ Sandra said.
‘We know that,’ Malkie said. ‘It’s the record we’re talkin’ about. Where’s Simpsy?’
‘Phonin’ again.’
‘Again?’ Malkie was amazed. ‘He holds that phone to his gub like one o’ them oxygen-masks. Whit’s the gemme?’
‘Some bird in Possil. Must be love. He canny play it much more often. How long till his train?’
‘Just over fifty minutes,’ Sandra said.
‘Come on, come on,’ Tich said. ‘Ye think he’s still going to Sammy Dow’s for a drink before he catches it?’
‘He said he is,’ Malkie said. ‘Crazy-cuts, though.’
‘Well. It’s his life.’
‘Might be ours as well, though,’ Malkie said. ‘If any o’ those teams catch up with him in there.’
‘Maybe we should tell ’im tae get a gildy on.’
Having said it, Tich looked at Malkie and Sandra. Nobody was volunteering to act on his suggestion. The music was like a locked door.
Well, I called him to my side
And said, ‘Son, you must go to bed
For your conduct has been very, very poor.’
With trembling lips and tears inside
He pleaded there with me,
‘Don’t make me go to bed, papa,
And I’ll be good.’
Mickey Ballater was lamenting through the music his lack of a son, nobody to take over what he had achieved. Music was for him a way of disposing of the feelings the terms of his life had no use for, like an emotional colostomy. He accepted the relief with gratitude. He was sorry they didn’t have any Hank Williams’ records.
Hank Williams was the man. He just pulled his heart out his chest and laid it on the table and let it pump the blood all over the carpet. You were wading out the room when he was finished. He was a brave singer.
Still, Hank Snow was penicillin on a record, doing the diminishing pain in Mickey’s side no harm and leaving his head clear to work out where he was. At least the police had got a good job done on the wound. But the best ointment for it was remembering how much worse Hook Hawkins must be feeling, if he was feeling anything. Mickey hoped not. He only regretted that he hadn’t found the time to attend to the young brother. That Laidlaw had complicated things.
But Mickey had made it to Eddie Simpson’s on the South Side. It was a safe house. Eddie remembered the old days. They were all he had since he took ill. The doctors hadn’t decided what it was yet, Eddie said, but Mickey had. If Eddie didn’t have cancer, it was coming up in the lift. There would be no remission for good behaviour this time. That was why Mickey had told him to stay away from the house as much as possible while Mickey was there. The last thing Eddie needed was any other kind of trouble.
Anyway, Eddie had put together a scratch team for him. They weren’t much, so busy looking for trouble that if the real stuff found them they would probably come in their drawers. The only one Mickey thought might give him a run for his money was Sandra. He fancied that. When the others were there, she was always giving him secret looks, like envelopes not to be opened till later. He might arrange a later for her.
Eddie’s son Simpsy was a measure of the others, a plastic imitation of his old man, not the same class. He might as well have ‘Made in Hong Kong’ stamped on his bum. They didn’t breed them like before but they still bred them all right. He smiled at the thought of those who believed in improving things. No matter what progress they made in the future, one thing he was sure of was there would still be supersonic robberies, a black market in laser beams.
But he had to get to Birmingham before that. If he had to back up here for trial, he would have his own team with him. Then they would see.
Well, it broke my heart to hear him saying