Walking Wounded (12 page)

‘The hert's aye the pairt aye

That maks us right or wrang.'

He would travel. He might even emigrate. Wasn't that what Scots did? He remembered a story he had heard.
Somebody in the pub had been talking about a book he was reading. It was about a man sailing round the world himself. That was something to do, except that Benny didn't know a gib-sail from a tablecloth. But the man had written a book about his trip. One place he stopped in South America, he met some natives and they told him about a primitive tribe up-country who had red hair. The man had visited them and, sure enough, they had dark skins and reddish hair. The man thought they were descendants of Scotsmen who had settled there. Panama, Benny thought it was. The idea of it made him shake his head in wonderment.

‘Christ, we're everywhere,' Benny said, raising his beer-can in a toast to the empty room. ‘We are the people. Open an alligator's gub in the Congo an' a Scotsman'll nod oot at ye. We're everywhere. Australia, Canada, America, South America, Asia.' He paused, running out of places. ‘Russia. There was always Scotsmen in Russia. An' all over Europe. For centuries. India. A lotta Scottish graves in India.' He started to sing. ‘There was a soldier, a Scottish soldier. We are the people. Scotsmen can go anywhere. An' why no' me? Why not Benny Mullen? Ye can go anywhere. Ye could even go –' His mind eddied with the drink and he waited to find what exotic flotsam it would throw up. ‘To Babylon.' The word shimmered in his head. ‘Babylon.' He laughed and drained his can. ‘Correct. Ye could even go to Babylon. How many miles wid that be?'

His laughter was a celebration of how simple life was. His eighth can gave him his vision complete. He would go to Babylon, not necessarily to stay there. He would see it first and then decide. But it was a beginning. He would need an atlas.

He referred the project to his memory of Noreen, like praying at a shrine before a journey. He felt her approval given. As if an oracle had spoken, he remembered another of her parting warnings, given from her hospital bed when her body hardly made a bump on the coverlet and families
were murmuring all around them in the ward and her eyes had rekindled for a moment into their old liveliness:

‘You've a life to live, Benny Mullen. Live it! Ye're therty-five. Don't let me catch you skulkin' in coarners. Ah married a man, not a mouse.'

That had been three years ago and what had he done to justify her faith? He would do it now, for the two of them. He stood up suddenly.

‘By Christ, ye're right, Noreen. You are right, ma bonny lass. An' say Ah've said it.'

He toasted himself with his can. It was empty. Wondering vaguely if there would still be a can left over in the fridge from his last carry-out, he made to move through there and slipped on an empty beercan. The can he was holding slithered across the floor. He landed on his hands and knees. He gave long thought to the problem of rising and slowly subsided on the carpet. He felt it was his first step on the way to Babylon. Trying to find a comfortable position for his right leg, he kicked another empty can. Just before he slept, doubts began to buzz like flies around his dying enthusiasm. How could he go? Where would the money come from? Would he feel the same in the morning? He hoped that Noreen would forgive him for the mess.

15

Callers

8
.30 a.m. The phone rang in the sunlit room. At the third ring there was a click and a recorded message came on. In spite of the mechanical distortion, the woman's voice was warm. It had a quality of vulnerability, suggestive of beginning to surface out of sleep. It was a voice that had given some men from time to time a delicate and pleasurable spasm, as if they were having a gentle orgasm through the ear. Behind it, a record was playing somewhere. It was only just impossible to make out the tune.

The voice said: ‘Hullo. This is Fran Ritchie. I'm sorry I'm not in. But I'm hithering and thithering quite a lot these days. The fact that I could say that proves I'm not drunk. Whoever you are, your message is welcome. I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Please wait for the horrible bleep.'

As the bleep came, a man's voice said, ‘Shit.' The word was barely decipherable. The voice became irritably clear against a background noise of traffic. ‘Fran. Mike. I need to see you. I know Polly's been phoning you. Before you went to Southend. She told me last night. Didn't sleep a wink. Jesus, some time I've had. Look. I had to tell her. The guilt was breaking my balls. You've got your other involvement, anyway. Don't deny it. I'm sorry she's taking some of it out on you. That wasn't my idea. But, believe me, you've got the best of it. You only have to listen to her
on the phone. And you can always put the phone down. Me. I'm permanently plugged into her. And it's not just words either. Know what happened last night? She beat me up. One stage, she was pulling me up and down the floor by my hair. Christ. My scalp feels as if it's been tenderised. Another session like that and it'll be a Woolworth's wig for me. I don't fancy going home tonight.' The voice stopped talking. There were sounds that weren't clear. One could have been tapping on glass. ‘You've got to help me here, Fran. We can synchronise our stories. Minimise the whole thing. Polly says you refuse to tell her anything. Good girl so far. But we have to meet and sort something out. Phone me at the office. Soon as you can. Right? Fran, this thing could destroy my children. You know how I feel about them. You've always understood that. One last favour. That's all I'm asking. Don't let me down. Otherwise, I'm going to have to start up a refuge for battered husbands. If we –' There were rapid pips on the line. ‘Shit. No more money. Phone me.'

8.45 a.m. The woman's voice that followed the bleep was querulous, as if the empty room were letting her down.

‘Oh no. Fran, it's Mum. Why didn't you phone? Especially after the day I had. Your father was utterly impossible. Those latest pills aren't helping at all. I might as well give him smarties. I don't know how long I can cope with this. You know what he wants to do now? He wants to convert the attic. Can you imagine it? After all this time? He wants to convert the attic. All the years I asked him to do it. Now he decides. Now that he's developed five thumbs on each hand. Now he's going to convert the attic. The attic. He might as well want to explore Antarctica. I just about had to chain myself to the pull-down ladder to stop him. This can't go on. You know how much just letting him hear your voice can help. Phone as soon as you get back. And when you finally come up, remember the tin of walnut oil.'

10.32 a.m. ‘Hullo, Lucy's godmother. We trust you're remembering Sunday. Don't you dare be in Africa. Phone for final details. Love.'

11.47 a.m. ‘I don't know how welcome this message will be, Fran. It's Donald Evans, your friendly neighbourhood bank manager. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings. But your £4,000 overdraft facility has become a five-and-a-half thousand pound monster. You'll have to come in. Talk we must. You simply can't go on like this. This is London, Fran. Not Disneyland. It's not monopoly money we're issuing. Phone me. Don't hide from it in your usual fey and charming way. Phone. Liked your last piece in the paper. The one about women in prison. Phone me.'

11.53 a.m. The woman's voice was not being allowed to go where it wanted, like a dog on a very tight leash. ‘I've been trying to give you time to get out of bed. I imagine that usually takes a while for you. You never know who's going to be in there with you. Cow. You call yourself a journalist, I believe. I call you a whore. Don't worry. I'll be calling again. And again. See you in court.'

1.21 p.m. ‘Fran. Mike. I'm sorry about the message this morning. Forgive a man whose hair's falling out. But don't hide, lovely. How long does it take to get back from Southend? Remember, no matter what happens, I'll always love you in my way. It may be a pretty crippled way but there we are. If you get back this afternoon, please phone me. I'll be in the office.'

3.59 p.m. The woman's voice spoke against one of Bach's violin concertos. It sounded like one of the strings. ‘Fran. Susie here. Just to say thanks yet again. And give you a progress report. I'm fine. Annabel's fine. She loves the cottage. So do I. After the last few months, I'd forgotten there were places like this. The big bad wolf can't get to us here. He doesn't know where we are. I can hear my nerves begin to quieten down already. Listen. Annabel's beginning to talk. At least here, with just the two of us, her first words
won't be swear words. It's all thanks to you. I've just canonised you. Saint Frances of Kentish Town. Trust me, Fran. I'll be paying back every penny. Must go. Annabel's eating some flowers. Catch you between your fascinating assignments. Love you.'

Five times, at 4.20 p.m., at 5.01 p.m., at 5.05 p.m., at 6.46 p.m., at 7.58 p.m., the telephone rang but each time the receiver was replaced at the other end before the recorded message had been completed.

8.50 p.m. ‘Fran. I'm still waiting. And so is your father. If you get back before midnight, please phone us.'

9.05 p.m. ‘The man you love to hate, Fran. What's going on? You met the man of your dreams in Southend? You must have small dreams. Interesting developments in connection with the Peterborough piece. I think you should do it. Phone me soonest. But not during the hours of darkness. Janice has rediscovered her nerves.'

9.32 p.m. ‘Mike here. Mike. Remember me? Where are you? Why aren't you phoning? I've had about enough of this. I know who's behind it. Alan Martin. Right? The East End sophisticate. Your bit of rough trade. Thinks he's a hard man, does he? Tell him I know people could break his knee-caps just by looking at him. Tell him that. You phone me. I'm at–' A lot of voices invaded the phone. Someone was singing ‘On the banks of the Wabash far away'. He came back on and very precisely stated a number. ‘You phone me. D'you hear? Bloody well phone me.'

10.03 p.m. ‘Cow. Slut. Whore. Cocksucker. Marriage-breaker. ‘Bye.'

10.22 p.m. ‘Hullo. Alan Martin here. This message is for Mike Thomas. Are you listening, bastard? Yes. I know your tricks. Fran's just told me. No. Don't try to stop me, love. He's got it coming. I know you've still got a key, Thomas. And I know you like listening to Fran's answering machine. Well, shove this up your ear-hole, shit-face. Fran's with me. And that's where she's staying. She's had enough of being
nursemaid to a neurotic. She won't be coming back to the flat except to move her things. And I'll be with her. If you show face, you'll be wearing your bollocks for a cravat. End of message.'

10.44 p.m. ‘Don't believe it. After I've done. Hope you're pleased with yourself. Children. You don't care about children. Godmother? Huh. Not over. Not yet. But thanks. Oh, thank you very much.'

The connection was sustained for sixty-four seconds in silence except for a muffled sound before the receiver was replaced.

11.13 p.m. ‘Hullo, you. This is Eddie Kendrick. I feel I shouldn't have to say my name. But my parents taught me politeness. I think maybe they overdid it. Anyway, I can't quite trust you yet to know my voice. I couldn't take it if I was talking to you for five minutes and you couldn't work out who it was. So this is me. Eddie Kendrick. How are ye, love? Me, I'm walking on the moon. You know what I did today? I wrote the best pieces I've ever written. I know I have. All right. I'm quietly as drunk as a monkey. But it's the truth. It'll be in the paper tomorrow. You're the main person I want to read it. You remember the game of darts we had in ‘The Popinjay'? I was at my boring worst that night. If they had a charge ‘drunk in charge of a mouth', I would've got twenty years. Your tolerance was amazing. That's when it started for me. You treated me like a human being when I was an arsehole. I never forget it. Remember the big man who wanted to dance on my head. Had a point. You went right between us. I thought you were like Joan of Arc. Never forgot it. That's when it started for me. What I'm saying is. I don't exactly know. I've always liked your work. It's like an extension of your smile. Some smile. A motel sign in the desert. Okay. I better get the head out of overdrive. I want to celebrate. That's all. Just celebrate. That's what I'm asking. All those times since. In the pub. Talking about bye-lines and shit. I've just been thinking
you. What I want to do. Is see you tomorrow night. I've taken a liberty here. I've booked a table for two at ‘L' Escargot'. And let's see. We'll just see. The table's for half-past eight. And we meet in ‘The Popinjay' at seven o'clock. Where it began. I'm a romantic's what I am. Violins in attendance. Okay? I'll phone you again tomorrow. Just come and we'll see. Be there, you. Sleep nice.'

The glow from the streetlamp outside made a path of light across the room, along which lay, like signposts on a journey, a magazine open at photographs of some exotic place, a lighter and a discarded pill bottle, which was empty.

16

End game

^‘
A
h'm just thinkin', Jeanie,' Gus McPhater said, laying open on his knee his paperback copy of
The Essential Schopenhauer.
He had been leafing back and forwards through the section ‘On Human Nature'.

‘Oh yes,' Jeanie said. ‘The doctor warned ye about that.'

Gus laughed loudly, seeming to suggest that being married to a witty woman was a joy forever. But Jeanie didn't respond. She was watching another of her old films on television, what she called ‘a good romantic, old-fashioned picture, before they started showin' their knickers every two minutes'. This one was
The Greatest Show on Earth.

It wasn't concentration on the film that had made her fail to respond. Just as Gus could read Schopenhauer while Betty Hutton was dancing on a trampoline and singing a song at the same time (amazing breath control, Gus thought over the edge of his book), so Jeanie could engage in quite elaborate conversation while watching a film. Once, Gus remembered, during
The Enchanted Cottage
she had argued scathingly for half-an-hour about the pointlessness of his tendency to read books that ‘normal' people didn't understand. Gus had found her contempt rendered powerless against him because she had been simultaneously enthralled by a picture the main point of which was that a man who had been hideously disfigured in the war underwent instant plastic surgery when he crossed the threshold of an old
cottage. While she watched her films, he read and they both talked during these activities, as if they had left their minds quietly knitting on their own.

It was for a different reason that Jeanie didn't react to the generosity of Gus's laughter. He had applied the water but the flower didn't open. She had learned to suspect Gus most when his approach was most casual. ‘There's something, Jeanie,' he would say, or ‘D'ye know what?' or ‘Ah'm just thinkin',' and Jeanie's senses would quicken as if she had just spotted someone loitering with intent. Watching Charlton Heston (wasn't he a fine-looking big man?), she was waiting. Gus glanced back at Schopenhauer: ‘Money, which represents all the good things of this world, and is these good things in the abstract . . .'

‘Naw, but,' Gus said. ‘Ah was just thinkin'. How long is it since you saw your Sadie?'

Under the appearance of following the action on the screen, Jeanie scouted the question carefully. She could see no ambush. Her sister Sadie lived in Toronto. That seemed a long way round to go to lay a trap.

‘Must be five year,' Jeanie said.

‘It must be. That's right. It's five year past since she came over wi' Big Tam.'

‘He had put on an awful weight,' Jeanie said.

‘Well, we're none of us gettin' any younger.'

‘That's true.'

She had seen Charlton Heston in a disaster film recently and he had looked so much older. She had resented Gus asking if Charlton was the disaster. But he was looking his best in this one.

‘Aye,' she said. ‘Ah saw auld Sammy Pryce on Tuesday. Or was it Monday? No, it was Tuesday. For Ah remember Ah had just come oot the butcher's. And his face looks that sad these days. It's the saddest face Ah've ever seen.'

‘That's just tired facial muscles. That's all it is. Makes everythin' sag. Sammy looks like a bloodhound.'

Jeanie said nothing. She had little patience with the way Gus turned everything into a theory. She wasn't the only one who had noted that tendency. In ‘The Akimbo Arms', where he drank, Gus McPhater was paid court to in a way that was only half-jocular. He had more than once declared himself to be in the tradition of the Scottish autodidacts. Even the word was typical. It was natural that he would prefer it to ‘self-taught'. He would seldom say ‘giraffe' when he could say ‘camelopard'. It was that preference for fancy words that sometimes made people defensively try to outmanoeuvre him. But that wasn't an easy thing to do, for besides being well-read he could think fast on his feet or sitting down, which was the more usual posture. (He sometimes said he was a founder member of the perisedentary school of philosophy.)

Once in ‘The Akimbo Arms' a group of students had turned up with what was obviously a prearranged plan to disconcert him. He had been handling himself well when the subject of Oscar Wilde was raised. One of the students had been studying him intensively at university. He noticed a certain vagueness pass across Gus's features.

‘You know his stuff?' the student asked.

‘Oscar Wilde?' Gus winked at the regulars in the bar.

‘I'll bet you a pint you can't tell me one thing he said.'

Gus gazed at the ceiling.

‘One thing Oscar Wilde said?'

‘That's right.'

‘Set up the pint,' Gus said to Harry the barman. ‘If Ah win, you pay. If Ah lose, Ah pay. All right?'

The student agreed. Gus stared at the pint thoughtfully. He turned to the student.

‘Good evening,' he said, and was drinking deep before the student realised that Gus was quoting.

That occasional hint of charlatanism was effectively offset by the things Gus genuinely knew. If somebody mentioned Esperanto, Gus could tell him that it had been invented by
Zamenhof and that he was a Pole. He could describe the flag of Zimbabwe. It was as if his early career as a merchant seaman had developed an imaginative extension. Once Jeanie's protestations had put him in dry-dock, as he expressed it, he had sent his mind travelling to exotic facts and imaginary landscapes. His theories were his rough maps of those inner territories. They were travellers' tales of the intellect and, as in most travellers' tales, truth was usually in there somewhere, though not always immediately recognisable.

Jeanie had long ago ceased to look for it. She simply waited for the theory of the moment to pass, like static on a radio. She had decided that Gus's theories never changed anything. They were something to be put up with. If you married somebody you knew liked garlic, you couldn't spend the rest of your life complaining about bad breath.

‘But as Sammy is,' Gus said. ‘So shall we be.'

On the television Cornel Wilde was talking in a funny accent to a woman. In this film he was always comparing women to drink. To this woman he was talking about ‘shompanye'. Jeanie assumed he meant champagne.

‘Time's runnin' out for us, too, Jeanie,' Gus was saying.

‘We're only fifty-eight. Sammy's in his seventies.'

‘Fifty-eight. Fifty-eight.' Gus said it with sonorous melancholy, like the tolling of a bell.

‘You'll be fifty-nine in August,' Jeanie said.

‘That's why we should do what we want to do while we can, Jeanie. Life's for livin'. Ye don't know what could happen to Sadie. Ye've never even been over there. You should go. What's to stop ye? The lassies are married. Ye've seen them settled. Enjoy yerself, wumman. Go to Canada.'

‘How could Ah afford that?'

‘Ye've yer wee bit money. Yer nest
egg.'

At the mention of the money, Jeanie listened more carefully to him. Since she had won three-and-a-half thousand pounds on the football pools a year ago and put it in the
bank, Gus had been referring to it in a variety of ways, as like someone looking for a password.

‘And what would you be doin'?'

‘Well, Ah could come along.' He paused. ‘Ah miss the travel.' He paused. ‘And maybe take in some other places while you're at Sadie's.'

Jeanie's head swivelled round from the television. She looked at him and nodded. It wasn't a friendly nod. She wasn't agreeing with him but with herself.

‘Huh!' she said. ‘A train through the Rockies.'

‘Sorry?'

She was watching the television again.

‘Ah think Ah've lost the thread o' this conversation,' Gus said.

‘A train through the Rockies,' Jeanie said.

Gus knew what Jeanie meant. Jeanie knew that Gus knew what Jeanie meant. Gus knew that Jeanie knew that Gus knew what Jeanie meant.

‘Ah don't know what ye're talkin' about,' Gus said.

Jeanie smiled. It was a smile it had taken years to temper, steely and impregnable. It was a fortress of a smile. Gus philosophically regretted, not for the first time, that law of diminishing returns in human relationships whereby what was given in intimacy came back malice. When they were younger, Gus's ambition to take a train through the Rockies, from Calgary to Vancouver, was a dream they had jocularly shared. Out of all the travelling he had done, that was the one thing he had quite wilfully decided he had missed. It had become somehow climactically important for him. If he had been Moses, a train through the Rockies would have been Canaan. ‘When we're older,' Jeanie had often said. ‘An' the weans are oot from oor feet.' He regretted his big mouth. If people didn't know your dreams, how could they thwart them?

‘No train through the Rockies for you, ma lad,' Jeanie said. ‘My Goad. You've wanted yer hands on that money
since Ah won it. The one time in ma life Ah've had a few pounds by me. An' ye're slevering at the chops tae get yer hands on it.'

Gus glanced down at ‘On Human Nature' as if he couldn't believe in it. He watched Jeanie watching television.

‘That,' he said, ‘is a contemptible remark. You should see about yerself, missus. Yer mind's poisoned. It's maybe all the radiation off that telly.'

Jeanie sat smugly saying nothing.

‘But here the envious man finds himself in an unfortunate position; for all his blows fall powerless as soon as it is known that they come from him,' Schopenhauer said.

Gus's mind circled Jeanie's silence cautiously.

‘What's the point of havin' money and doin' nothin' with it?'

‘Ye never know what's round the corner.'

‘Another bloody corner. Ye could go on like that till they bury it with ye.'

‘We've one grandchild an' another on the way. There's always a place for money tae go.'

‘Ah'll see them right. Ah'm earnin'.'

‘A bookie's clerk!'

‘Ah'm a marker. Ah mark up the prices.'

‘That's the nearest you'll get tae money. Seein' other folk collect it. An' how long will ye be there?'

‘How d'ye mean?'

‘How many jobs have you had since ye came out the Merchant Navy?'

The question settled between them in the silence, as awesome in its unanswerability as the riddle of the universe. Gus half-heartedly started to count back and gave up. You might as well ask Casanova for a quick count of his ladies.

‘Ah like to try different things,' he said.

‘Ye should try work sometime.'

‘Ah've always worked. And you've always had yer money.'

It was true, so Jeanie didn't answer. But a lot of other things were true as well, such as that he had always worked on his own terms, taking to every job he had ever had an intractable pride that he obeyed, regardless of the circumstances in which they were living. There was the time she had been pregnant with Donna, her second, and they were very short of money and he had walked into the house early in the afternoon. He had only just got the job as a storeman in a printer's warehouse. Once she had found out why he was home, her disbelief had lasted for four wordless days until he found another job. He had argued with the foreman about the number of islands in the Japanese archipelago and, impassioned beyond common sense, had finished up shouting that control of words should never be left in the hands of an ignoramus and that he couldn't work for a moron.

Jeanie had never known where the next bout of unemployment was coming from. The calendar had always been a financial minefield for her. She had sometimes suspected that Gus arranged his industrial crises in order to have more time to read. He had once developed a mysteriously painful back that was just as mysteriously cured when he had finished reading
War and Peace.

When the money came, it was like an insurance policy being realised. All those times of worry when Gus had come home to say that was him finished with
that
job, all the nights lying in bed doing accounts in her head, a pound here and two pounds there, had eventually amounted to £3,500. She felt the justice of it. It didn't seem like an accident. It was the security she had surely earned. But it was only security as long as it was there. While it lay in the bank, she was safe from the daily irritations, the fraying of the nerves that thirty-five years of marriage to Gus had represented. He complained that she didn't use it. She was using it all the time. It lightened her housework. It sweetened every cup of coffee, sugared every doughnut. At
night she could bathe her mind in it like a Radox bath before she went to sleep.

‘What would be wrong wi' usin' some of it to go to Canada? Ye won it at the football, anyway. Though how ye did, Ah don't know. Ye wouldny know a right half from a wee half.'

‘No, you would, though. You would be drinkin' a lot of wee halfs if you could get your hands on it.'

He was right about her knowing nothing about football but that didn't diminish her belief in the justice of her win. She had a dim image of a lot of young men running about a lot of parks that fateful Saturday afternoon, doing the strange things people do with a football, and she thought there was a kind of fairness in the way they had conspired to repay her for what she had suffered in the cause of the game. For the importance of football to the Scots was yet another of Gus's theories, one for which he seemed to feel the need to do a lot of fieldwork. Every time Scotland and England played at Hampden or Wembley, he was there, as well as having been in Cardiff and Belfast. The way back from such places always seemed to be fraught with hazard. She was used to getting phone calls from Preston or Carlisle or Dumfries two days after an international match had finished to learn that a car had broken down without warning or a freak thunderstorm had flooded roads or one of the men he was with had been taken to hospital with acute something-or-other. Her exasperation had come to a climax the last time he had done it. When he announced himself, she had said, ‘Gus who?' and put the phone down. When he got home, she said she had thought it was one of those funny phone calls.