Tombstoning (9 page)

The tables were given over to old-timers nursing pints and nips, chain-smoking with sickly yellow fingers, their dedication to the cause respected by the younger ones who stood around in footy tops and scarves, with close-cropped hair, downing pints and glancing up at the English premiership match on the television in the corner. The three middle-aged women behind the bar glided effortlessly and efficiently between each other, providing pints and banter as required.

David had missed breakfast. Still buzzing a little from the extended whisky nightcap, he had tottered gently out the door of the Fairport, avoiding any contact with Gillian with a hard ‘G’. A blast of sun-soaked fresh air sobered him up and the memory of holding Nicola outside her folks’ house put a wide smile on his face. He’d strolled past the railway, through the High Common and down the hill to Tutties, an ancient, pebble-dashed, whitewashed building sitting exposed next to the main Dundee Road, which carved through the town turning north.

So here he was, in the pub again. Could be worse, he thought. He had a quick look for Gary, not at all sure that he would recognize him, then headed to the bar and got a pint in. After a couple of big gulps he felt a tap on his shoulder.

Gary Spink had not taken the years well. He had always been a frail kind of figure, but these days he looked positively apologetic about still drawing breath from the atmosphere. He was small, several inches shorter than David, and seemed even smaller by virtue of a slouch which was a long way towards becoming an old man’s hunch. He wore dirty trainers, worn-out jeans, a lumberjack shirt and a cheap-looking Toronto Blue Jays baseball cap. He had a scratchy, half-hearted goatee which made his face look dirty, something compounded by greying, lopsided teeth in a thin-lipped smile. He removed the cap and ran a bony hand through his thinning hair before replacing it. He had a downtrodden air and a weasly way of moving. It wasn’t a good look.

‘David,’ he said in a gentle voice, almost a whisper. ‘You’re looking well.’

‘You too,’ said David. ‘Pint?’

‘Lager, cheers.’

They found a table in the corner, next to the newly painted gents toilets, and sat down. David tried to dredge up what he could about Gary’s life from his memory. Hadn’t he stayed in Arbroath, working for a bank or something? He had been good with numbers at school, as well as something else, but David couldn’t remember what. He had always been the put-upon character out of the four of them in the ADS, and behind his back they had called him Snarf, after the comedy character from
Thundercats
. Thinking about it now, David realized the way the three of them treated Gary back then was a gentle, latent kind of bullying – never treating him as an equal to themselves, always taking advantage of his demure nature. It was pathetic really, but wasn’t it just the way all boys are growing up? Taking advantage if they can? He felt a pang of guilt in his stomach and took a swig of lager.

‘So, how’s it going?’ he said.

‘Good,’ said Gary, sipping gently at his pint and lighting up a fag. He offered across the table but David waved the pack away. ‘It’s good to see you again. After all this time, eh? Quite something.’

‘Yeah, suppose.’

‘So what have you been up to?’

David was already sick of recapping the last fifteen years of his life, but he had honed it to a nippy forty seconds of bare facts, and he gave the spiel to Gary.

‘What about yourself?’

‘Oh, you know, nothing too exciting. You can’t get up to anything too exciting in this place. I’m still working for the Royal Bank. Slow progress up the career ladder, all that shite.’

‘No wife? Kids?’

‘Well.’ Gary looked sheepish. ‘There is a wife. Kind of.’

David looked at him. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean? Spill it.’

‘Five years ago I saved up enough money and holidays to take an extended trip to the Far East. Three months I was over there. Anyway, I met someone while I was out, a Cambodian girl called Lee. Well, long story short, we got married while we were there and she came back to Arbroath with me.’

‘That must’ve got the town gossips going.’

‘Not as much as a month after we got back, when she emptied my bank account and disappeared. I’ve never seen or heard from her since.’

Fuck’s sake. David felt sorry for Gary, but almost spluttered his pint nevertheless. It was such a clichéd story: emotionally stunted Westerner gets taken for a ride by shyster looking for a free ticket into Britain. But the cliché of it didn’t stop it hurting, he supposed, and he could see it still rankled with Gary that he’d been fished in so gullibly.

‘I know, I know,’ said Gary. ‘Don’t think I haven’t heard it a million times before, especially from my mum. The folks around here think I’m a fucking joke, I’m used to that. Gary Spink – gullible arsehole. But, well…’

He seemed to give up on what he was saying, ending with a shrug and a sip of his pint.

‘Fuck this town,’ said David, warming to Gary all of a sudden. Fifteen years ago, when he was part of this town, David had treated Gary shabbily, when he was supposed to have been his friend. It was too late, but maybe he could at least make up for it in some way by taking Gary’s side against this place now.

Gary was nervously removing his cap and swiping at his strands of hair, and David realized what a good idea it had been to leave when he did. This town had worn Gary down – he looked at least forty, rather than the thirty-four he actually was. He had smoked three fags since they’d sat down, each one devoured with a hunger born of depressing addiction. He wasn’t enjoying them, he was just smoking them because he had to.

‘You did the right thing, leaving Arbroath,’ said Gary, as if reading David’s thoughts. ‘This place is fucking useless, it sucks the life out of you, so it does.’

‘Why don’t you leave, then?’

Gary’s face lightened, his features seeming to come into focus as the fag smoke cleared. ‘Funny you should say that. I’m planning on doing exactly that.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, you remember I was always good at art back in school?’ Art, that was it, thought David. ‘I never really got a portfolio together, but I’m doing it now, painting and drawing, and I’m going to apply to art college as soon as I’ve got enough decent stuff to show.’

It didn’t sound the most convincing plan David had ever heard, and considering Gary had spent fifteen years penpushing in a small town, he suspected this was a pie in the sky plan that would never come to anything. But then, what the hell did he know about Gary’s life?

‘Sounds great,’ he said, waving his empty glass. ‘Another pint?’

‘I’ll get them,’ said Gary, and shuffled off towards the bar.

David felt exposed without Gary’s puny frame between him and the pub, and he was eliciting stares from the other punters in the place. He kept his eyes on the television until Gary returned. Another snippet of Gary’s life came to him as he started his second pint.

‘How’s your sister doing?’

Gary had a sister, a very cute sister a couple of years younger than them, one of the main reasons that the rest of them had hung about with Gary, truth be told. Despite being two years older than his sister, Gary had always seemed like the runt of the litter as far as the Spinks were concerned. Susan was outgoing, vivacious, always smiling and happy and finding the good in people. She was brainy too, David remembered, one of the brightest in her year. Naturally she’d got all the attention, with her attractive yet unthreatening looks, her effortless charm and her exam results. It couldn’t have been easy for Gary, living in the shadow of a younger sister all those years, but he never seemed to resent Susan’s assumed status as the successful one in the family.

‘She’s in Prague. Did languages at Glasgow Uni and has been travelling ever since. Amsterdam, Sicily, Lisbon – all over the place. Now she’s working for the British Embassy in Prague, something pretty high up. Handy for the odd holiday. She definitely had the right idea, getting out of here.’

‘I’m sure you’ll do the same. What sort of stuff are you drawing?’

‘Dunno, whatever comes into my head. Kind of fantasy graphic stuff, I suppose.’ Gary clammed up, unwilling or unable to talk about something so close to him. The word ‘fantasy’ didn’t exactly fill David with confidence for Gary’s chances of art college, but you never know, he thought. Better change the subject.

‘How’s the folks?’

‘Fine, fine. Still working. Mum’s a cleaner at the school and Dad’s now a security guard up at the hospital. Works nights. I still live with them, did I tell you?’ David raised his eyebrows. ‘I know, it’s pathetic. I was going to get my own place, but… well I don’t know… stuff kept getting in the way.’

David waved this away. ‘You don’t have to explain anything to me,’ he said. ‘Live where you like. Besides, if you’re getting out of here, what does it matter?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Here’s to getting the fuck out of Arbroath, then.’

‘Cheers.’

They clunked pints and finished off what was left in the bottom of the glasses. David got up to get another round in, and Gary gently but firmly held on to his arm.

‘You know, it’s good to see you again,’ he said, suddenly serious. David felt awkward standing there, looking down at Gary’s wonky teeth and scrotey beard.

‘It’s good to be here,’ he said, because he felt he ought to say something.

Every other square inch of Scotland was basking in unlikely summer heat but, despite the unbroken sunshine, Gayfield Park was somehow still cold, windy and wet. The most exposed football ground in the country, the rickety old maroon and white stadium sat precariously on the edge of the sea, just a few hundred yards down the coast from the harbour which reputedly used to shine the beacon that the team’s nickname, the Red Lichties, derived from. They were close enough to the waterfront for the salty fish smell to reach their nostrils and the occasional sea spray from the waves to gradually soak them through to their skins. The wind whipped in off the North Sea relatively calmly, but it was still enough to cancel out any warmth from an unconcerned sun that sat so high in the sky it looked as if it was set for life up there.

The mince on show before their eyes wasn’t helping, David thought. The Scottish premier league that he watched on television was dire stuff, but this was a hundred times worse. It had been so long since he’d been exposed to third division football that he was almost shaking with the shock of how rank it was. It seemed barely any higher up the skill ladder than a park kickabout, both Arbroath and Montrose teams (deadly local Angus rivals) consisting of a mish-mash of hapless young kids in ridiculous fin haircuts or mullets, and old warhorses thickening around the middle and never shy about leading with the studs up in a way that, years of experience told them, would make maximum carnage of the opponents’ legs.

Still, it was entertaining in its singular dreadfulness, and the relatively good weather had led to a healthy crowd of around four hundred home fans and the same again of travelling support, both sets of supporters enjoying swearing at the tops of their voices at everyone and everything imaginable, occasionally to a jaunty little tune.

Gary and David were standing on the crumbling terrace beside a rusting, ramshackle metal stanchion and soaking up the atmosphere. Sadly, Montrose had gone into an early lead after a dodgy offside decision and the old-timers and kids alike were letting their feelings be known to the poor bastard in the black. Arbroath’s bright young hope of a centre forward had the unlikely surname of Brazil, the irony of which was not lost on both sets of supporters, both sides giving him pelters every time he skied a ball high and wide, either into the sea at one side or onto the main road at the other. It had been a long time since David had stood on a terrace at a match like this, and he found the experience incredibly comforting – the smell of piss, the air full of profanity, the occasional witty one-liner from someone who looked like they couldn’t even tie their shoelaces. This was the real heart of Scottish football, he thought to himself.

Watching the football made David think sentimentally about Colin. He’d been on the club’s books when he died. It was impossible not to think of that. Of course anything could happen in a football career. Colin could’ve been injured early on and dropped out of the game, or maybe the drink and small-town hero worship would’ve got to him. Maybe he just wouldn’t have been able to cut it, or he might’ve ended up like one of these hatchet men on the park at the moment, gradually drifting further back in the side until he was the two-footed stopper at the centre of defence. Or he could’ve signed for a bigger club, then a bigger one, his ambitions taking him to the premier league, such as it was, and maybe international honours, whatever that was worth in the current climate, with the dire state of the national team. Ifs and buts. David knew it was pointless speculating, but he momentarily enjoyed the pointlessness of it, drowning in a soporific sea of possibilities.

‘Reckon Colin would’ve done better than this shower of shite?’ he said. He noticed a tightening of Gary’s jaw.

‘Couldn’t have done much worse.’

There was a pause. Gary didn’t seem too comfortable with the subject but David continued anyway, the booze having made him chatty.

‘Do you ever think about him? About what happened at the cliffs?’

There was another pause as Gary studiously followed the match even though action had stopped for an injury in the middle of the park. Eventually he spoke.

‘Sometimes. Not so much these days.’

‘I know what you mean. I was the same, until this reunion came along. I mean, no offence, but I hadn’t really thought about anyone from Arbroath for a while until I heard about the reunion. I thought maybe it would’ve been different for you, staying here. I thought there might’ve been more jogging of your memory about Colin.’ Another long pause. ‘Well, has there been?’

Gary slowly turned to David and he had a glassy look in his eyes, as if his mind were somewhere else. ‘No, not really. It’s best not to think about these things. Accidents happen, that’s all there is to it. Talking about it now isn’t going to bring Colin back, is it? In the end, it doesn’t matter if he fell, jumped or was pushed. He’s dead, and all the wondering in the world about what happened that night isn’t going to change that fact.’