Tony Black - Loss

‘Couldn’t you tell?’

‘What, being dug out by…’ He produced the wage slip belonging to the mentaller. ‘… Ian Kerr of, where’s that?… Pilton.’

‘Yeah, but there was more than that. I got the impression that was a regular occurrence. See the way yer man Andy fired through those doors with a couple of lumps? He had a routine. That was all a little too practised for my liking.’

I turned the key in the car door; the central locking was slow in the cold but got there in the end. Usual was sitting in my seat. As I got in he jumped first into the passenger’s side then over to the back again.

Mac got in and frowned at me. ‘Those boys were hardy, deffo. I think they’re just off the shop floor, though. Andy probably just grabbed the biggest going.’

I reached for the seatbelt. The inertia-reel stuck a bit, gave it a good tug, said, ‘Well, maybe our man Ian fae Pilton will fill us in.’

Mac grunted, ‘If he can still speak after he’s been filled in!’

I punched the engine, spun tyres. Gave a last glance to the factory: thought I might rumble Davie at a window but he was nowhere to be seen. The place looked so ordinary it unnerved me.

On Newhaven Road I sparked up a Marlboro, chucked the pack in Mac’s lap. He still looked deep in thought, cogs turning like Windy Miller’s gaff. ‘Are Czechs legal here?’ he said.

‘Oh yeah. Don’t get so many of them as the Poles, that’s all.’

‘Still, legal or no’, times are hard and nobody likes to see their job being taken by a foreigner. See all those protests on the telly, barricading in those Italian workers?… Mental.’

I nodded, wound down the top of the window to let some smoke out. ‘They’ll be undercutting the wages. By how much, though — that’s the question. I don’t deny anyone a job, but if they’re getting below the going rate then everyone’s getting ass-fucked.’

‘Except the boss man.’

I wound up the window again. It was too cold to let any air in. ‘Michael wouldn’t go for that.’

Mac swivelled on the seat, ‘I wasn’t trying to say-’

‘No. I know… I wasn’t having a go either. What I’m saying is, Michael wouldn’t go for that kind of racket, I know it.’

Mac’s mind ground out an answer: ‘But fat Davie might.’

‘Bang on.’

I drove Mac back to the Wall.

‘It really as bad as you say in there?’ I asked.

‘Pretty much.’ It was a bad scene. I wondered what Hod had been up to with my old pub. ‘You should come and take a swatch at the place.’

I hadn’t ventured into the Wall since I sold up. Sounded like Hod’d turned it into — the worst of things — a style bar. Just the thought of trendies in Jimmy Choos laying waste to my memories of the place had me about chucking up, said, ‘Maybe later.’

Mac got out the car, bent over the door. ‘Move on, Gus. Stop living in the past.’

Felt content where I was, didn’t see anything so fucking great about the present, or any future to come for that matter. Went Judge Judy, said, ‘Whatever.’

‘I’m serious, mate… Come down later, Hod’ll be rapt to see you.’

I knew he was right. Hod was my oldest mate and I’d good as blanked him because of this pub. I still felt sore that I’d lost it — Col had left it to me in his will. I said, ‘Aye, okay. Soon, promise.’

Mac thinned his lips. Wasn’t buying any of it. He closed the car door. Usual jumped into the vacated seat.

The drive home was slow, the traffic ponderous as the endless Edinburgh buses struggled with the elements. Snow and freezing temperatures did not go with double-deckers, hills, and lazy lard-ass drivers, all looking for an excuse to piss off anyone that crossed their route. They were an almost perfect symbol for the modern Scottish workforce: why devote your time to making the customer happy when it’s far more satisfying to make them miserable?

I got parked across from the shop where they sold the aquariums and exotic fish. The drains reeked round here, real bad. I’d caught a bloke tipping a bucketful of dead little fish down there once. My powers of deduction told me that it wasn’t a first.

Usual chanked it up the street, sat at the door to the stairwell. I tugged his ears as I reached the step, put the key in the door. Some jakey had taken another slash on the wall. I held my nose and waved the dog on. As I took the stairs I saw the old woman from across the way. I’d seen her a few times before. Never knew her name — Debs and I referred to her as the auld wifey at number three.

‘Hello there,’ I said. She was struggling with a couple of Iceland carrier bags. ‘Want me to get those for you?’

She beamed. ‘Oh, would you, son?’

My heart went up a gear; I pressed out a smile. ‘Surely.’ She had a great hand-knitted scarf wrapped around her neck, I think the term is Fair Isle. ‘That’s a fine knit there. You do that yourself?’

She was still a bit breathless after the few steps she’d taken. ‘Oh no, my late sister did this for me, many a long moon ago.’

I immediately felt the tragedy of her life; it seared into me. I felt my own age too — I’d now lost a brother. I carried up the bags and listened to the old woman tell me about her sister’s great talent for knitting. ‘I’ve a flat full of her jumpers and scarves. Each one is a memory, and you can’t have too many of those.’

I had no words for her. She took the bags from me and disappeared into her flat and her reverie. I felt my hurt rising, but I fought it. I wouldn’t let myself weaken. I turned and went into my flat. Took off my Crombie and removed the quarter-bottle of Grouse. I placed it on the coffee table and sat before it, staring.

I knew it would be so easy for me to open the whisky, neck the lot. I tasted the fire of it, running over my throat. I sensed the burn in the pit of my stomach as it landed. I felt the hum in my head that would come soon after, the hum that made it all worthwhile. I knew I was a trouble drinker because of that hum. Other people — normal people — drink for the taste, for the pleasure of it. I drank for the sensation, the effect. I drank to attain the hum in my head that said the louder noise outside had been deadened. The sound of reality, the world of living and breathing was drowned out by drinking.

I stared at the bottle, the little Grouse on the front, the low-flying burdie that we call it in jest. Would you like a low-flying burdie, Gus?

God, yes, would I ever.

Just to whet my thrapple.

Just one or two.

Just the ten.

Just a bucket, then.

I knew there was no safe number, not after one.

But I was tempted.

I picked up the bottle, held the cap between my thumb and forefinger; all it would take was one quick twist.

I fought it.

That’s what I’d done for so long now. One drink was too many, and after that, a thousand wouldn’t be enough.

When Debs had taken me back in, when we’d set up home together again, I’d vowed not to drink.

‘I don’t want you to do it for me,’ she said. ‘It’s got to be for you.’

I understood. I saw where she was coming from. The change had to come from within. I’d done the one thing I had thought I never would. Went to the one place I had previously laughed off all suggestions I go: Alcoholics Anonymous.

Was I an alcoholic?

Did I know what it meant?

That’s what they’d asked me.

I read every description I could find. None of them seemed to fit me, but in every one of them there was something that fitted me. I admitted defeat.

‘My name’s Gus Dury and I’m an alcoholic.’ I said the words, but it was all meaningless to me. It was all ritual. I sat through their meeting, listened to their plaintive, whining tales of woe. Poor me, poor me, poor me a drink!