Gordon Ferris: The Hanging Shed

‘I don’t know what you’re reading there, but the commission was confirmed. As was the next. It was Major Brodie, acting Major. I reverted to Captain when I demobbed.’ Why should I care what this little prick thought of me? But it seems I did.

He went on as though I hadn’t spoken, ‘Now you’re a reporter, I believe?’ Said like wife-beater.

‘That’s right. Where did you get all this?’

‘We can’t be too careful. In the circumstances. I contacted the Glasgow Chief Constable’s office.’

Hislop began to look ever more uncomfortable and put his specs back on. To stop me hitting him, maybe. ‘What I’d like to know – we’d like to know – is why you want to see him. What I mean to say is, we don’t want any more headlines. Do you see?’

I stared at him. So that was it. ‘I’m here in a private capacity, not a reporter. The London papers don’t cover regional stuff.’

He gripped his typed sheet for comfort. ‘Well, of course, it’s just with your police affiliation, and all the fuss we’ve had…’

I cut in, exasperated with all this shilly-shallying. ‘I’m just a friend. Wanting to see an old pal. I wish I’d heard sooner, before the trial. Are you refusing to let me see him?’

Off came the glasses again. ‘No, no, of course not. It’s just… with so little time the appeal etc… we don’t want any problems. Do you see?’

I didn’t feel like being helpful. ‘I don’t think I do.’

He pushed back his chair. ‘Perhaps you haven’t been aware of the uproar there has been in Scotland? The public were, shall we say, quite upset by it all. We don’t want to stir things up, do we?’

I noticed sweat beading his thin top lip. My, my, Shug, look what you’ve done. ‘Mr Hislop, all I’m asking is to visit a man who has four weeks left to live.’

‘Quite, quite.’ Hislop fussed around, moving some papers on his table and generally making me want to grab him by the lapels and give him a good cuff round the ears to spur him into action. Finally he leaned over to his desk buzzer and when his pale assistant responded he told her to arrange for me to see Hugh in the visitors’ wing.

‘Half an hour only, Mr Brodie. And of course – ahem – we will require you to be searched beforehand. If you don’t mind. Can’t be too careful, you know…’ He trailed to an end and I left him to gnaw at his desk or whatever he did to control his inner rages. Practise his elocution perhaps.

A different guard escorted me through the warren. Our feet rang out on the tiled floor as we headed towards the cells. We came to an open space with a line of seats jammed against a counter. Above the counter, and coming down to rest on it, was a six-foot-high metal grille. I could see other chairs facing these on the other side. I was motioned to a seat. There was no other visitor. I sat and lit a cigarette, taking deep drags to calm me down. Beyond, on the other side, a door swung open about twenty yards away. A guard stepped forward, looked around and then motioned to someone behind him. A shackled figure shambled forward, head bent to the floor. He wore grey overalls and chains round his wrists and feet. Another guard followed him out. They pointed to me and waited for the prisoner to lift his head and step forward.

I didn’t recognise the creature who stood, uncertain, by the door. His head was still bent but there was no shock of black hair. The scalp was bald with livid patches. This wasn’t Hugh Donovan. There’d been a mistake.

Finally the figure shuffled towards me. He stood for a moment facing me through the grille. I stood up, my legs shaking. He twisted into the seat opposite mine and sat bent over his knees, his forearms resting on his thighs and his hands clasped together. Keeping his head bent, he began rocking backward and forward. He might have been praying. He needed to, if this was Donovan, and he’d done what they said did. But it wasn’t Hugh’s head.

I gazed at his tortured skull. Red and white, marbled and distorted as though the skin had run. Which of course was what had happened. I had seen it before on some Spitfire pilots, young men, handsome young men, whose faces had melted in the flames of their cockpit. When the plastic cover caught light, there was no putting it out, and little chance of wrestling it open without serious burns if your plane was spiralling towards the ground. I suppose the same applied to a tail gunner if your Lancaster had taken hits from phosphorus shells. I sat down and placed my forearms on the bench that ran under the grille through to his side.

‘Hello?’ I tried.

‘Hello, Dougie.’ He still didn’t look up, and the voice was slow and dull. But this was Hugh. ‘Thanks for coming.’

‘Hugh, look at me.’

For a moment he did nothing. Then he slowly lifted his head. I’d been steeling myself but it wasn’t enough. I stopped breathing. It was a clown’s face, badly made up. Hairless, seamed and ridged like a child’s bad attempt at a patchwork doll. One ear, the right, was missing completely. The nose was vestigial. Then he smiled. It was the worse thing. A twisted, lopsided desecration of that beautiful grin. At least he had his sight; those bright blue eyes of his seemed to mock me from behind a mask that he would take off any minute now. He’d giggle, and then we’d both laugh at the great wheeze. But this was no faux-face from our boyhood guising at Hallowe’en. I couldn’t help myself. The tears sprung.

‘Oh Christ, Shug. You’ve been through it, old pal.’

I reached out instinctively with both hands and clamped them through the grille. He looked at them, smiled that perverted smile again, and put out his own withered limbs. He touched my fingers and then pulled away. I saw the guard on his side step forward and shake his head at me. I pulled back.

‘You wanted to know why I never got in touch…’ He sounded as though he was speaking from beneath the sea.

‘Hell, Shug, none of us are as braw as we were.’

‘I’ll swap you ony time, Dougie,’ he said softly.

We held each other’s eyes for a minute longer till we both got embarrassed.

‘Tell me, Hugh.’

He looked up again. His blue eyes beseeched. ‘I never killed those weans, Douglas. And certainly no’ that wee boy, Rory. As God’s my judge, I never killed him. How could I kill Fiona’s boy?’ I saw his eyes mist and wondered if this was another of his big lies. Perhaps the biggest.

Hugh and I had grown up playing together even though he went to the chapel and I went to the kirk. He lived in the next close. He’d call me a Proddy sod and I’d call him a Papish pig. And we’d punch each other on the shoulder to see who could stand the pain the longest. Our friendship survived Orange marches through Kilmarnock when the drums and flutes and orange sashes would clear the streets of left-footers like Hugh. It survived us going to separate schools where the religious differences were drummed in deep. We got looks down the main street, him in his black blazer and me in maroon.

It survived some of the battles we had at the local dance hall – the Air Training Corps hut – the Attic – Protestants squaring off against Catholics instead of enjoying the girls and the dancing. Hugh left school at fourteen like most of my pals, and followed in his dad’s footsteps into an apprenticeship in the cooperage at Johnnie Walker’s. I stayed on at the Academy thanks to a Coop bursary aiming for my Highers. It wasn’t my choice. My father, through his coughing, vowed I’d not follow him down the pits.

Hugh and I stayed in touch. He brought his girlfriend, Maureen, to the Attic one night. They’d been to St Joseph’s School together. And Maureen brought her sister, Fiona. Fiona, with heavy black hair flowing halfway down her back. With the upright head and slim musculature of a dancer. With dark lashes sheltering Celtic-black eyes.