James Kelman - An Old Pub Near the Angel

The biggest man on the floor was a Ukrainian who moved with the slow precision of a weightlifter. He rarely spoke but laughed a lot. In Anglo-American litrachuhh the narrator would describe him as ‘a hulking brute’, unless the upper-class hero was not intimidated by his physicality in which case he would be described as ‘a great oaf’ or ‘a lumbering jackass’, and be felled by the hero ‘with one mighty swoop to the jaw’. My grannie would have called him ‘a big handsome man’.

The best-dressed guy on the floor was a Jamaican whose name I think was Danny. He worked directly beneath me on the spreading table. The asbestos and cement came from Ian Lithgow to me. I mixed a concrete that consisted of a tub of asbestos fibre and half a tub of cement, and a certain amount of water. Then I dumped it down a chute. On the level below me the ‘spreader’, the Jamaican, opened the trapdoor, and let the mix pour out. He spread it then rolled it into asbestos sheets. Each month we did a batch of blue asbestos, the deadliest fibre. When I was learning I erred and forgot to put in the cement element of the composition. Danny released the chute trapdoor and out splashed a tidal wave of asbestos paste. I had forgotten to put in the solidifier. I looked over the rail to apologise. He was covered in stuff, wiping it out his eyes and mouth. The spreading job was supposed to be one of the cleaner ones, that was how he could wear decent clothes doing it. It was my first experience with the less familiar aspects of Jamaican English, beginning with a paean to the old ska song ‘Judge Dread in Court’, with slightly different lyrics to Prince Buster; I will kill you I will torture you I will fucking lynch you ras clat fuck blood scotch twat fucker blaaad claat.

And the wee Polish guy tugging at my elbow, conveying that I should not approach him for a couple of days, as if I had intended any such thing. In Manchester they all call you a twat. They all called me a twat anyway. A few years later I discovered twat did not mean ‘silly fool’, it meant ‘vagina’. Ach well.

It was a tricky job but paid good money and sometimes you could work double shifts. If me and Ian had done the dough and were extra hungry we stole dry bread from the canteen bins out in the deserted parking lot, spread on layers of asbestos, applied a little brown sauce with the blue and white. What a tasty mouthful. This asbestos company operated an Employees’ Suggestions box throughout the world. In view of mounting litigation costs new uses for asbestos fibre were especially welcome. I tipped them the one about sandwiches and they now export them to service station fast-food outlets on foreign shores. Ian and myself are in touch about twice a year; we have an interest in each other’s symptoms, and wonder if we are the last of that batch of factory hands.

On a few Saturdays, with the other three guys that came with us, we went to Old Trafford to watch United; Law, Best and Charlton, Paddy Crerand. When Denis scored the fans sang:

The King Has Scored Again

The King Has Scored Again

eee aye addio

The King Has Scored Again

My heart beat loudly. We also went to Maine Road to watch the City and Colin Bell, Johnny Crossan, Mike Summerbee.

I watched many strange games in Manchester. In one of them Man City destroyed Tottenham Hotspur for 88 minutes. But they did not have Jimmy Greaves and Alan Gilzean. Two breakaways, two flicked headers, two goals. Tottenham won 2–0. The pair of them walked off the field chortling, pair of baldy bastards. But Alan Gilzean, what a fucking player! But so was Greaves, one has to confess.

My loyalties were split one day at Old Trafford. Jim Baxter had signed for Sunderland and the team was full of Scottish players. They had a great team but unfortunately did little on the park to show it. Baxter had thickened, and was not the player of old, but still capable of plenty. He played a few years on from then.

Several months before that game in 1964, when I was in Glasgow, a horrible tragedy had occurred. John White, a Scottish internationalist, was killed by lightning while playing a round of golf. White was a highly regarded inside right, known as ‘the ghost’, a member of the Tottenham Hotspur team of the early 1960s. For myself, and thousands of other boys, it was always Law and Baxter, but John White was a hero too.

Davie Mackay was in that same Spurs team. Nobody would have accused him of ‘swashbuckling’, he would have lifted ye up by the jersey and stared ye right in the eye, even if ye were Billy Bremner. Men prefer that, but boys like the ‘swashbucklers’. Scottish sports journalists describe football-artists in these terms, unless they are wee guys like Jimmy Johnstone, a ‘buzzbomb bundle of tireless energy’. In addition to Baxter and Law my own heroes were Lester Piggott and the Cincinnati Kid.

Jim Baxter was still with Rangers at the time of John White’s funeral. He called into the gents’ outfitters, Jackson the Tailor, at 76 Union Street with a pair of old black trousers. Downstairs he came to the alterations section in the basement and interrupted a period of quiet. I was working in Jackson the Tailor for a couple of months. It was mid morning. Me and the old guy who worked down there were reading the Sporting Life and discussing race form in a side room. We heard the footsteps coming down and my older mate went to serve the customer. It was his turn, we took turn about with customers. I sat on with the Sporting Life . But to my horror I saw it was Jim Baxter, in his shirtsleeves. Nobody came into a tailor shop in their shirtsleeves, not in them days boy, no sir.

The older guy was laughing across at me, he knew I was a fan. Then he relented and called me over to continue the job. Baxter needed the alteration in a rush. It was the only pair of black trousers he had. He never bought stuff ‘off the peg’, it was always made-to-measure. But there was no time to get a new pair made, this was a rush job, he was flying down for John White’s funeral and needed them immediately. The trousers had to be altered, the trousers taken in or let out or something. He was still quite skinny in those days. I listened and noted everything. A rush job, immediately, John White’s funeral, a rush job. Then he was off up the stairs, whistling a cheery wee tune to himself. I heard his footsteps dying away. Then I had to dash through to the alterations room and see the crabbit auld cunt that did the tailoring alterations. Robert, I said, this is a rush job, immediately and it is just, it is a rush job, honest.

What ye mumbling about, rush job, I do not give a fuck if it is a rush job.

Aye but it is Jim Baxter.

I do not give a fuck if it is — who?

Jim Baxter.

I do not give a fuck if it is Jim Baxter, the job will take a fucking week.

But Robert, it is for John White’s funeral.

I do not give a rat’s fucking tadger if it is the fucking Queen’s fucking — who?

John White.

You must think I am stupit. Here, give me them.

Thanks Robert.

Shut the fucking door on yer way out.

The trousers were altered, pressed, packed and ready to go, on schedule. And he had done the actual repair job. Usually he just slapped the trousers three times with his heaviest iron and muttered, That will do the cunt. Then he flung the trousers or jacket at ye, Give that peg for two days.

‘Peg for two days’ meant ye folded the trousers or jacket on a hanger and hung it up for two days. When the customer came in for his new suit complete with alterations ye had to pretend it was all done and hope the guy would not ask to try it on again. Once ye had him out the door ye knew he would wear the unaltered trousers and just fit his way into them, or else get his wife or his maw to do the job.