‘If it’s alright I’ll stay here for now, if I’m no disturbing you.’
‘Naw, it’s fine. Don’t worry. Ye sure ye don’t want me to give him a call but? See I don’t know when he’ll be back and he might be a while.’
‘It’s okay, thanks.’
There is a chair on the other side of the office, and he goes over to sit on it. He stays there a moment, looking around, noticing the gap beside the divider that looks into the shop. He gets up again, Lynsey glancing at him from her desk, and he walks over to a metal cabinet, on top of which is a paper. He stands reading it, or looking at it anyway. The corkboard on the wall beside him is pretty empty. Normally there would be a long list of accounts and pre-bookeds on there, but there’s only a few names scribbled on, under the yellowing page-three girl who’s been pinned on that board for over a decade.
‘I might nick to the shops a moment actually, Lynsey, while I’m waiting.’
She keeps her eyes on the screen a few seconds before turning round.
‘Whatever ye like, Mick, that’s fine. I’ll tell Malc ye’ve been by, will I?’
‘Do, please, Lynsey. I’ll be back in a wee while just.’
He leaves the office, giving a keek into the workshop as he turns toward the lane, where he can see Bertie, chatting with Steve and a young-looking guy that he can’t see the face of.
Crapbag. He’s a genuine crapbag and no other word for it.
He is in a bar near to work. He came in because it looked quiet through the window, and he was just wandering about, no sure where to take himself. Crapbag. These are his friends, christsake; well, if no exactly friends then his co-workers at least and that’s something, sure that means something. Even now, it does. And no like they don’t have their own problems to deal with. Steve, with the wee daughter’s illness; Bertie, and his troublesome relations with the drink. Sure Bertie would be good for a patter; if there’s one thing he’s got still, it’s his patter, even if he’s lost the rest. Amazing to think now, how he used to be. The figure he was forty years back almost, during the work-in. A five-foot queerie with jug ears — no way anybody would ever have thought he could hold a crowd the way he did — but when he was stood up on his brazier with a hundred black squad around him, he’d have the whole yard in his spell. The high wheedling voice, beeling at the government, two hundred clatty ears hanging on his every word. The guy could go on for hours. It was the likes of Bertie that kept them going: even when the redundancies were announced, they stayed put inside the yard, kept building, didn’t let the liquidators or any other of these bastards past the gateman; and all through that winter and into the next spring Bertie and the other shop stewards would still be there to hand them their wages. The campaign fund keeping strong; the wives and girlfriends bringing them their food parcels. Cathy and her piles of ham rolls wrapped in newspaper, passing them to him over the barrier.
Hard to believe, looking at it now — at Bertie, old and trembling — that they’d won.
He gets up and goes to the bar for a final drink.
‘Half and a half,’ he tells the barman, watching as he reaches up to the gantry for his whisky. Christ but the drink makes him maunderly. These will definitely be his last. A maunderly old crapbag, is what he is, and he grins to himself, the guy coming over with his beer and his whisky. He’s a great beardie young fella, with small sore-looking eyes like a pair of arseholes, and an oversized T-shirt that says VAGITARIAN — one of they ones you only ever seem to see extra-large guys wearing. He puts the drinks on the bar top and Mick pays and goes back to his seat in the empty room. A cruel bastard, ye can be, Mr Little. A cruel auld bastard and ye know it. Aye, I do, I do, but see that’s the drink to blame again, if the truth be told.
An unexpected turn of events: he has found himself in an electrics megastore. How he’s ended up here it’s hard to say, and given that the stumbliness of the drink is taking effect and that he isn’t actually needing a new iPod the now, it probably isn’t the most sensible destination. It’s woke up the security guard though.
Nay chance he’s going back into work now. That is obvious enough. No with the length of time he’s been out for, and the smell of alcohol on him. He walks around at random, half aware of the guy watching him. There’s golf on the televisions all down this aisle he’s in, dozens of them all showing the same event: one of these sponsor’s tournaments with a few pros playing round with rich men and celebrities — retired footballers and elderly film actors, that type of nonsense. Alan would love it. He’s probably watching it the now even. Christ he’s probably playing.
There is laughter somewhere. It’s hard to tell where it’s coming from, how far away it is, but it is a man and a woman. He has grown to recognize the voices from hearing them talking together sometimes if it’s a warm day outside. They were arguing earlier the afternoon but now the sound is clearly of laughter, finding its way in under the door and through the cracks in the window frame.
He is cold. He has lain there with the covers pulled up all morning and there’s nay chance he’s tweaking the door open so he’ll have to live with the smell just — the clinging stink of a fish supper he brought back a few days ago. A while later but he is too thirsty, and he does get up, leaving the shed to go for a drink of water from the kitchen. He is turning the tap when the phone starts ringing in the lobby. It startles him. He stays there, frozen, with the tap still running and his arm beginning to shake. It rings a long time. He waits for it to finish and he turns the tap off, putting the mug on the counter, and leaves straight out the house by the front door.
Maybe he’ll take a walk down the water. Keep moving; he needs to keep moving.
He isn’t too sure the time, or even what time is safest to come these days and what’s best left alone, it’s that long since he’s been down. So he comes slowly up the path, scanning up the way ahead. There is a young couple he comes past, with their two tiny weans. One of them is in a pram, and the other running about, scampering between the headstones and her da trying to coax her back. She’s got the right idea but. Why no run about the place, instead of teetering around the graves? They’re dead, christsake, they’re no bloody sleeping.
There’s new flowers again. The ones Mick left himself are there next to them, gone dry and brown by now. He picks them off the plot and gets them slung over the palings. Strange Craig’s left them there, although — no, see even that is probably done on purpose, as a reminder, a marker of the da’s last visit. That’s exactly the kind of thing he would do, in fact.
It’s started drizzling, so he walks over by the palings and stands under a bit of tree. See what makes it the worse is it’s hard no to pity the boy. The same useless fucking pity that everybody’s so keen to stick on him, he’s doing it too, when he imagines him up there in Yoker alone and angry, naybody to talk to. Or maybe he does. Who knows? There had been a girl he was seeing, Tina, was she called, but there’s no way of telling if they’re together still. Maybe not, in fact. It had seemed like something of a loose kind of arrangement, from what Cathy had said. He should ask him. He gives a short laugh at the idea. He’s only once before been up to see him, and that was a few years ago. Into the dingy flat boufing with dirty plates and filled-up ashtrays, but no his place to say anything, so he didn’t; and neither did Cathy even because, as she says, it’s his life to do as he wants and see if he wants to make mistakes then he’ll make mistakes, and he’ll learn from them, same as the rest of us.
The family are on their way, ahead of him as he leaves along the path. The wee girl holding her father’s hand, and him leaning over and giving the wife a kiss on the side of the head. You don’t think, when you’re that age, about all this that might happen — that is going to happen, actually, a pure certainty it is going to happen. You’re too busy with getting the food on the table and clothes on the weans’ backs and feeding the wife’s bingo habit to start thinking about what like it might be when one of you is gone. And too right. Jesus. Too right. What a thing to think about.