William McIlvanney - The Papers of Tony Veitch

This was no mouse. He saw one of an endlessly repeated species, the young who haven’t found their limits yet and wonder if you could help them. Gus Hawkins was puffed out like a cockerel with his own aggression. He had started before Mickey had even thought of it.

Mickey knew that steel to steel the boy had no chance. Six days a week, Mickey would kill him. But this was one of those seventh days — wrong time, wrong place. It wasn’t why he had come. So he had recourse to a feeble gesture.

‘Wait a minute!’ he said.

Gus Hawkins waited. Mickey found it useful that Hook Hawkins intervened.

‘Listen, you,’ Hook said.

‘Jim!’ Gus said at once. ‘Don’t give me your routine. I’m your brother. In my book you’re just a liberty-taker. We’re where you come from. Don’t try to frighten us. I’ll put up with you. But I really don’t need his nonsense. He doesn’t behave, I’ll show him a quick road down.’

He nodded to the pavement thirteen storeys below. Mickey Ballater couldn’t believe how silly the boy was but he was trying to. This was unbelievable but it was happening. What struck him was how seriously Hook was taking it.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Hook was saying. ‘You get a grip. The man’s just askin’ a question. Tony owes him money.’

‘I don’t believe that.’

‘But it’s true,’ Mickey said.

‘Tony Veitch’s got money. His mother left him it. He doesny need to owe anybody.’

‘Ah don’t mean he borrowed it,’ Mickey said. ‘Ah just said he owes it.’

‘What for?’

‘That’s ma business.’

‘Fine. Take it with you when you go out. Like as fast as your legs’ll carry you.’

Hook held up his hand to forestall Mickey. He looked down at two boys playing with a ball.

‘Gus. Ye’re no’ in a book now, son. This is serious business. Ah didny want to come here. Ah tried for ye at the flat. Then Ah knew ye wid be here for yer dinner. There’s people in a hurry tae find where Tony Veitch is. Mickey’s just one o’ them.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Big John Rhodes is lookin’. And Cam Colvin.’

Gus looked from one to the other, unbelieving.

‘Come on. Tony blew his finals.’ He laughed. ‘Is Cam a member of the University Senate?’

‘Whatever that is, Ah think your Tony did a bit more than that,’ Mickey said.

‘They reckon he did Paddy Collins,’ Hook explained.

Gus stood looking over the balcony as if he had never seen the view before. He started to laugh and stopped and looked at the sky. When he looked back at them, his certainty was already clouding.

‘Tony?’

‘Tony,’ Hook said.

‘But why would he do that?’

‘He owed Paddy as well,’ Mickey said. ‘I came up and we were gonny collect together. By the time I get here, Paddy’s dead. Veitch’s shot the crow. Looks a bit that way, doesn’t it?’

‘You reckon?’ Gus was looking at Hook.

Hook nodded.

‘So what’s it got to do with me?’

‘You shared a flat, Gus,’ Hook said.

‘And what’s it got to do with you?’

Gus was completing his thought, running through Hook’s statement. Hook was shifty.

‘Cam isny too sure about me. Paddy an’ me fell out a wee while back.’

Gus’s stare left Hook wanting a shield against it.

‘Anyway, Ah know you liked him, Gus. Better if Mickey finds him. If he does, he’ll have a chance to check if the boay did it, before Cam gets there.’

‘I don’t know where he is,’ Gus said.

‘You must have some kind of information,’ Mickey said. ‘Ah’m holdin’ Cam Colvin off. He doesny know about you.’

‘Then tell him.’

‘It’s no’ you that’s gonny get the napalm. It’s yer brither. That wouldny do yer mother a lot o’ good.’

Gus looked into the living-room. His father was sitting like somebody found at Pompeii. His mother was reading the paper. Seen from outside, the room looked small, some chairs and ornaments, the pathetic sum of two hard lives. And here on the balcony was what those lives had produced, a hooligan whose existence mocked their decency and a student who still hadn’t begun to repay them for what they had given.

He felt an anger that was never far away from him. He looked down at what had been the Gorbals. This was improvement? His parents lived thirteen storeys up in a building where the lift broke down if you looked at it askance. His father’s life had made him an offshoot of the bookie and the pub. His mother still offered the world an irreducible decency the world didn’t deserve. Something had to be done. In the meantime, he couldn’t bear to add one more worry to their lot.

‘Gus,’ Hook was saying.

Gus looked at Hook, then at Mickey Ballater.

‘Don’t you two come back,’ he said.

But he knew himself the aggression of the remark was no more than stylish surrender. Why should he protect Tony Veitch? Let Tony look to himself. Gus’s parents were more important. Yet he resented how his brother was teaching him to hate himself. Family shouldn’t matter that much, but here it did. He thought how his father admired Hook more because he lived by his body, whereas Gus was just a reader of books. For his father it was better to batter one aggressor into the ground than try to help all the non-aggressors like himself. It was a strange philosophy, but not uncommon where Gus lived. What did this place want?

‘Okay,’ Gus said. ‘I’ll tell you the only thing about Tony that might help you. There’s a girl called Lynsey Farren. Lady Lynsey Farren. Lord Farren’s daughter. She was with Tony. Then Paddy Collins. Then Dave McMaster.’

Ballater knew he was getting close.

‘Where do Ah find ’er?’ he asked.

‘She’s got a shop in East Kilbride. Called Overdrive.’

‘Thanks, Gus,’ Hook said.

‘For being a shite? Don’t mention it.’

Distantly, Gus watched them go into the living-room. He saw how animated his father became because Jim was inviting him down to the pub. When they had gone, he saw how contented his mother looked, as if all was well with the world. He saw how Hook was probably nearer to them than he was, though he loved them in a way he sometimes thought might destroy him. He came slowly back into the room. He lifted his book.

‘Oor Jimmy’s lookin’ well,’ his mother said.

Gus didn’t look up. He was thinking that he would soon be with Marie and he was glad.

‘Is everything all right, son?’

‘Fine, maw. Everything’s fine.’

He tried to concentrate on his reading. But it was strange how he felt on the opposite side of the book from that with which he had identified before Jim and his friend came in. He felt he was one of the people Aimé Césaire was talking about rather than to.

‘In this disarming town, this strange crowd which does not gather, does not mingle: this crowd that can so easily disengage itself, make off, slip away. .’

‘A distinct tendency to sculpture whimsy,’ the tall man said. His eyes contemplated nothing thoughtfully.

‘Not unlike Joyce’s poetry.’ The small man was fat with black hair like a bush. He spoke with an assurance that suggested it was burning. He wore the kind of intense spectacles that draw the pupils like a poultice. ‘But at least he had his prose. Isn’t it strange with Joyce how the originality of the prose never seems to transfer to the poetry? As a poet, he remained slightly sub-Georgian. “Lean out of the window, Goldenhair.” My God.’

‘Or like Emily Dickinson. Reducing all experience to lace doilies.’

‘At least it makes a change from the spurious passion of Lawrence. You can’t read his poetry without feeling drenched in saliva.’