Louise Welsh - Naming the Bones

‘He’s fine, he’ll wake up in a moment.’ Rab indicated a pair of women sitting near the back of the room. ‘Why don’t you go over there and ask them if they want a drink?’

The women might have been sisters, or maybe it was simply that their style was the same. Strappy tops and short feathery hair whose copper highlights glinted under the bright lights. They were grown-up versions of the girls he’d gone to school with. They’d never have looked at him then, but now?

It was stupid. He didn’t fancy either of them, and besides, he wasn’t up to the aggressive dance of tease and semi-insults that constituted a chat-up.

‘They’ve got drinks.’

‘Well, get up, pretend you’re going to the gents’ and offer them another one en route.’

‘Is that how James Bond does it? Hello, ladies, I was on my way for a pish and wondered if I could bring you anything back? Ever wondered why it’s going to say “confirmed bachelor” on your obituary?’

‘It must be better than mooning over Ms Houghton.’

Lyle Joff awakened slowly, like an ugly toy twitching into life in a deserted nursery. The flesh beneath his eyes trembled and then the eyes themselves opened. He blinked and turned his fuzzy gaze on Murray.

‘Rachel Houghton.’ He smiled dreamily. ‘Good arse. Good everything else too.’

‘Lyle.’ Rab’s voice was warning. ‘We’re talking about a colleague.’

Lyle’s brief sleep seemed to have refreshed him. He wiped away the glue of saliva that had formed at the corners of his mouth and took a sip of his pint. ‘Listen to Professor PC. ’

Rab said, ‘Shut up, Lyle, you’re drunk.’

A couple of the pool players looked over. Murray raised his beer to his lips. It tasted of nothing.

‘We’re all drunk. Say what you were going to say, Lyle.’

‘Lyle, I’m warning you.’

Rab’s tone was low and commanding, but Lyle was too far gone to notice. He patted Rab’s shoulder.

‘Murray’s one of us, the three mouseketeers.’ He giggled. ‘It’s top secret. Rab said Fergus would have his balls strung up and made into an executive toy for his desk if he found out.’

‘The three musketeers, great swordsmen.’ Murray turned to Rab. ‘What’s the big secret?’

‘Nothing, Lyle’s just being provocative, aren’t you, Lyle?’

‘Not as provocative as Rachel.’ Lyle put an arm around Rab. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.’

Rab lifted the arm from his shoulder. His eyes met Murray’s and all of the ruined adventure was in them. There was no need to ask what had happened, but Murray said, ‘Tell me.’

Lyle looked from one to the other, wary as a barroom dog whose master is on his fourth drink.

Rab sighed wearily.

‘What’s the point? She’s a free spirit, Murray, a generous woman.’

‘I want to know.’

A little beer had slopped onto the table. Rab dipped his finger in it and drew a damp circle on the Formica. He looked his age.

‘A one-off mercy fuck, that’s all there is to it.’

‘When?’

‘The end of last term. You remember all that hoo-ha about my introduction to the new Scottish poetry anthology?’

Murray did. Rab had been forthright in his assessment that a new wave of Scottish poets were throwing off the class-consciousness, self-obsession and non-poetic subject matter of the previous generation and ushering in a golden age. The new wave had leapt to the defence of their predecessors while balking at Rab’s description of them as non-political. The elder statesmen had been vitriolic in their assessment of academics in general, and Rab in particular. It must have been a week when war and disaster had slipped from the news because the row had hit the broadsheets. Rab had been derided by academics and pundits north of the border and a source of amusement to those south of it.

‘It all blew up in my face a bit. Some people thrive on controversy, Fergus for example, but I don’t. It got me down. Rachel dropped into my office one afternoon to commiserate and we went for a few drinks, quite a few drinks. Then when the pub closed I remembered that there was another bottle at my place. There’s always another bottle at my place.’ He gave a sad smile. ‘I didn’t expect her to come and then when she did I didn’t expect anything more than a drink. I was going to tell you.’ He laughed almost shyly. ‘But a gentleman doesn’t talk about these things.’

‘You bloody talked about it to Lyle.’

‘Oh, come on, Murray. I’m an overweight fifty-five-year-old poetry lecturer and Rachel’s a thirty-five-year-old dolly bird. I had to tell someone. Anyway, I’d been drinking.’

‘You’ve generally been drinking.’

‘That’s a prime example of why I didn’t tell you. You can be such a fucking puritan, I thought you wouldn’t approve.’ He gave a low laugh. ‘And then you told me that you and she. . Well, I was jealous, I admit, but not jealous enough to throw it back in your face.’ Rab raised his pint to his lips and then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. His tone slipped from apologetic to defensive. ‘I don’t see what you’re getting so hot under the collar for, anyway. She’s another man’s wife. She doesn’t belong to you, me or anyone else in the department she might have fucked, except maybe Fergus, and if so I’d say he’s doing a very poor job of holding onto his property.’

It was the female player’s turn again. Rab moved his drink as she pulled the cue back then fired a white ball across the baize. Murray watched it sail into the depths of a corner pocket, sure as death.

He imagined taking the pool cue from her hand and smashing it into Rab Purvis’s beer-shined face. Teeth first, then nose. He’d leave the eyes alone. He’d always been squeamish about that kind of thing.

Lyle said, ‘Are you okay, Murray?’

He didn’t answer, just got to his feet and left before any more damage could be done.

Murray had been walking for a long time. Once a police car slowed and took a look at him, he ignored them and they drove on past, but their interest seemed to be the signal for his feet to start a winding route home. He left the main road and wandered uphill into the confluence of wide lonely streets that made up Park Circus, the jewel in the crown of Glasgow’s West End. Sometime after parlour maids and footmen decided they’d rather risk their health in munitions factories or the battlefield, the smart residences had been converted into hotels and offices. Now they’d been deserted for city centre lets and were slowly being reclaimed by speculative builders. Murray drifted past the weathered To Let signs, half-seeing the sycamore shoots sprouting from neglected guttering, the broken railings and chipped steps that might tumble the unsuspecting into the dank courtyards of window-barred basements. The plague-town atmosphere of the shuttered houses and empty streets matched his mood.

He took his mobile from his pocket and accessed the number he’d taken from a list in the front office and stupidly promised himself he’d never use. The night was starting to turn. He’d reached the top gate of Kelvingrove Park. Down below in the parkland’s green valley, birds were beginning to sing to each other. Murray pressed Call and waited while his signal bounced around satellites stationed in the firmament above, or whatever it did in that pause before the connection was made. He let it ring until an automated voice told him the person he was looking for was unavailable, then hung up and pressed Redial. This time the other end picked up and Professor Fergus Baine’s voice demanded, ‘Do you know what time it is?’

Murray cut the call. He sat on a wall and listened to the birds celebrating the return of the sun, then after a minute or two his phone vibrated into the stupid jingle he’d never bothered to change. He took it out, glanced at the caller display and saw the unfamiliar number flashing on the screen.