Runaway

Glasgow

I

Jack stepped down from the bus almost at the end of Battlefield Road and raised his head towards the darkening sky with a sense of foreboding. He took in the brooding silhouette of the smoke-stained Victoria Infirmary that climbed the hill above the field of battle where Mary, Queen of Scots, was once defeated by James VI, and felt as if someone had just walked over his grave.

He knew, in truth, that he no longer needed his stick. Most of his strength had returned, and the prognosis following his minor myocardial infarction was good. The diet they put him on had successfully lowered his cholesterol and the daily walking, they said, would do him more good than an hour in the gym.

Still, he had grown to depend upon it, like an old friend. He enjoyed the feel of the brass owl curled into the palm of his hand, steadying, reliable. Unchanging, unlike everything else around him.

Gone was the old Queen’s Park School, abandoned, then damaged by fire, and finally demolished. The Battlefield Rest, with its green and cream tiles and clock tower, once a news kiosk and waiting room for city trams, now an Italian restaurant. The red sandstone Langside Library was still there, a final gift from Carnegie, but the infirmary itself, filled for Jack with both formative and final memories, was due for closure, its functions to be replaced by the new Southern General.

His tonsils and adenoids had been removed here as a child. He could still remember the smell of rubber as they put the mask over his face to send him to sleep in the operating theatre, and the line of light beneath the door of his two-bed ward that night, mysterious shadows passing back and forth in the corridor beyond, like dark demons stalking his young imagination.

But as he stepped into the shabby green-painted foyer and breathed in that depressing antiseptic hospital smell, the memory that almost overwhelmed him was of the death of his mother.

Those dark winter evenings he had spent at her bedside, finding her sometimes distressed, at other times almost comatose, and once lying in her own filth. And then, finally, the night he had arrived to find her bed empty. Moved, the ward sister told him, to another building.

It had taken him some time to find her. And when he did, he felt as if he had stepped on to a stage set for some dreadful denouement. A cavernous Victorian ward, chaotic in its arrangement of beds and screens, light in pools barely permeating the darkness. She had gripped his hand, scared by the moans and occasional cries of unseen patients, and whispered, ‘They’ve brought me here to die.’ And then, ‘I don’t want to go alone.’

He had sat with her as long as they would let him. Then visiting time was done, and they told him he must leave. She hadn’t wanted him to go, and his last sight of her was glancing back to see the fear in her eyes.

The next morning a police officer came to his door. The hospital had lost his number — as they always had, no matter how many times he gave them it. His mother had died during the night. Alone, as she had feared, and it had filled Jack with a lingering sense of guilt that had never quite left him.

He had heard that Maurie was suffering from cancer, although he hadn’t actually seen him in years. And when his rabbi called to say that Maurie wanted to see him, it had come as news that his old friend had also suffered a major heart attack. Still, neither piece of news had prepared him for the shadow of a man who lay propped against the pillows of his hospital bed.

Maurie had always been inclined to plumpness, even in his teens. Then the good life that followed his elevation to the Glasgow Bar — and a solicitor’s property business that earned him a small fortune — had turned plump into corpulent.

Now only loose skin hung on his bones, a once full face cadaverous, his age-spattered skull almost bereft of hair following the chemo. He looked twenty years older than Jack’s sixty-seven. Of another generation.

Yet those dark brown eyes of his still burned with an intensity that belied appearances. There were tubes attached to his arms and face, but he seemed oblivious of them as he pulled himself into a seated position, animated suddenly by Jack’s arrival. And in his smile, Jack saw the old Maurie. Mischievous, knowing, superior. The ultimate showman, self-confident and full of himself onstage, knowing that he had a great voice, and that no matter how many of them there were in the band, all eyes were on him.

Two nurses sat on the end of the bed watching Coronation Street on his television.

‘Go, go,’ he urged them. ‘We have things to discuss in private here.’

And Jack was struck by how feeble that once powerful voice had become.

‘Shut the door,’ he said to Jack, when they had gone. Then, ‘I pay for that bloody TV, you know, and they watch it more than I do.’

Jewish was a part he enjoyed playing but never took too seriously. Or so Jack had thought. ‘My people,’ he had always talked about with a twinkle. But nearly four thousand years of history ran deep. Jack had grown up in a Conservative, south-side Protestant household, and so when he first started going to Maurie’s house it had seemed strange and exotic. Gefilte fish and matzo bread. Shul after school, synagogue on the sabbath, and the bar mitzvah, that coming of a Jewish boy’s age. Candles burning in the Menorah, two in the window on the eve of the sabbath and nine at Hanukkah. The mezuzah affixed to all the door jambs.

Maurie’s relationship with his parents had been conducted à haute voix, at first shocking to Jack, as if they were constantly at war with one another. Always shouting. Before he had come to realize that it was simply their way.

Maurie grinned at Jack. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’

‘Liar!’

Maurie’s smile faded and he lowered his voice, grabbing Jack’s wrist with surprisingly strong fingers. ‘We’ve got to go back.’

Jack frowned. ‘Back where?’

‘To London.’

‘London?’ Jack had no idea what he was talking about.

‘Just like we did when we were boys.’

It was several long moments before understanding finally penetrated Jack’s confusion. ‘Maurie, it’s fifty bloody years since we ran away to London.’

If anything, Maurie’s bony fingers tightened around Jack’s wrist in a grip that was almost painful. His eyes were focused and fixed Jack in their gaze, and there was an imperative in his voice. ‘Flet’s dead.’

Which only plunged Jack back into confusion. Was it an effect of the drugs that Maurie was on? ‘Who’s Flet?’

‘You know!’ Maurie insisted. ‘Of course you know. Think, for Christ’s sake. You remember. Simon Flet. The actor.’

And recollection washed over Jack, cold and depressing. Memories buried for so long that their sudden disinterment was almost startling. He took a moment to recover. ‘But Flet must have been dead for years.’

Maurie shook his head. ‘Three weeks ago.’ He reached over with difficulty to pull a folded Scottish Herald from his bedside cabinet. And he pushed it into Jack’s chest. ‘Murdered. Strangled in some seedy bedsit in the East End of London.’

Like opening the grave of some long-buried corpse, the odour of sudden, unpleasant recollection caused Jack to clench his teeth, as if fighting hard not to breathe in for fear it might contain contaminants.

Maurie’s voice fell to barely a whisper as he leaned towards Jack. ‘It wasn’t Flet who killed that young thug.’

Now Jack was startled. ‘Yes, it was.’

‘It wasn’t! It was only me that saw what happened. So it’s only me that knows.’

‘But... but, Maurie, if that’s true why didn’t you ever say so before?’

‘Because there was no need. It was a secret I meant to take with me to the grave.’ He jabbed a finger at the newspaper. ‘But this changes everything. I know who committed that murder in 1965. And I’m damned sure I know who killed poor Simon Flet.’ He drew a deep breath that seemed to tremble in his throat, as if there might be a butterfly trapped there. ‘Which means I’ve got to go back again, Jack. No choice.’ And for a moment he gazed beyond his old friend, lost in some sad recollection. Then he returned his regret in Jack’s direction. ‘I don’t have much time left... and you’re going to have to get me there.’

II

An acoustic guitar leaned against a wall in the corner of the room. A Gibson. But Jack could tell from the dust gathered on its shoulders that it was a long time since Dave had played it. It just sat there, like the reminder of a lost youth, and all the failed ambitions born in an age of dreams.

Dave had lost weight, and Jack assumed he wasn’t eating. Although he claimed to be off the drink, Jack could smell it on him. The whole room reeked of stale alcohol.

Dave followed his gaze towards the guitar. ‘She’s got more mellow with the years,’ he said. ‘Ageing like a good wine.’

‘When was the last time you played?’

‘Ohhh...’

Jack could tell that he was about to lie, but then he seemed to think better of it.

‘Been a while,’ he said instead, and he ran a rueful thumb over the uncalloused fingertips of his left hand. ‘Amazing how quickly they soften up.’ He glanced at Jack, a wry smile creasing his unshaven face. ‘And how painful they get so quickly, when you start again.’

Jack looked around the room. Curtains half drawn across the nets. A single bed pushed against one wall. A TV in the corner. A couple of well-worn armchairs gathered around the old tile fireplace. This had been Dave’s parents’ bedroom back in the day. A house inherited on the death of his widowed mother, and chosen to be the home in which he would raise his own family. A home full of dark, brutal memories that not even the bringing of new life into the world could erase. A home that seemed destined for sorrow. A wife gone in search of happiness elsewhere, a son returned like a cuckoo to the nest. Dave struggling with drink, confined now to a single room and soon, Jack had no doubt, displaced altogether. A care home perhaps, or sheltered housing like Jack.

Dave pushed himself back in his armchair and regarded Jack thoughtfully. ‘So Maurie’s no’ long for this world?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. He looked terrible, Dave. Really awful.’

‘And how does he think he can make the trip tae London?’

Jack said, ‘He wants us to take him.’

Dave’s chuckle was mirthless. ‘Aye, like we’re fit for it.’ His pale, dry lips shook off their attempt at a smile. ‘But I dinnae understand why he’s only telling us noo that it wisnae Flet that killed the guy.’

Jack pulled out the folded copy of the Herald. ‘It’s the story of Flet’s murder that sparked it.’

They heard the front door open and close, then heavy footsteps in the hall. The door of Dave’s room swung open and a middle-aged woman stood breathing heavily, glaring at them both. She might have been attractive once, Jack thought, if it wasn’t for the downturned mouth, an outward reflection of the inner person. But then, he mused, who else would have married Dave’s boy? She wore neatly pressed black slacks, a short grey jacket over a white blouse, and a face like milk left out in the sun.

Her focus fell on Dave. She said, dryly, ‘You’re back.’

‘Observation always was your strong suit.’

Her mean mouth tightened. ‘I found your stash.’

And Jack could see how disappointing this news was to his friend.

But Dave tried not to show it. ‘How’d you know it wisnae Donnie’s?’

‘I don’t care whose it was. It’s all gone down the sink.’ The hint of a smile lifted the corners of her mouth, and she glanced at Jack. ‘And I’d be pleased if you didn’t bring your drinking buddies round to the house.’

Jack bristled and stood up. He shoved the Herald back in his pocket. ‘Maybe we should continue this conversation somewhere else, Dave. There’s a nasty odour in here.’

Dave pushed himself to his feet. ‘Aye, you’re right. Somebody should tell her no’ tae wear nylon.’ He pulled a grimace in the direction of his daughter-in-law. ‘And the next time you want tae come intae my room, fuckin’ knock, alright?’

They took the bus to Queen’s Park. Jack had a dental appointment later and didn’t want to risk being late.

‘Long way tae go tae the dentist,’ Dave said.

‘It’s a family association that goes back a generation. His father was my father’s dentist. And anyway, his name always tickled me. Gummers.’

‘Ha!’ Dave guffawed. ‘That’s like Spark the electrician.’

They got off the bus at Shawlands Cross, and Dave suggested they go into the Corona Bar. But Jack steered him over the road to the park and proposed instead that they sit by the pond. No one would disturb them there.

They found an empty bench at the foot of a sweep of path that led down to the stretch of slate-grey water where Jack’s father had played as a boy. Sometimes there were ducks on the pond, but strangely today it was mostly seagulls. Harbingers, perhaps, of a coming storm.

It was early April, but the wind was still cold, and both men were wrapped up warm in winter coats and scarves. Dave wore a flat cap pulled down over once chiselled features that had lost their definition to become lugubrious. Loose flesh on a thin face. Jack’s hair, although pure silver, was luxuriant and carefully styled, and vanity prevented him from wearing a hat to spoil it. Dave was tall, a good three inches taller than his friend, and they made an odd pair sitting side by side on the park bench. Like bookends, Jack thought, and a refrain from the song played itself briefly in his memory.

‘Let me see,’ Dave said, and he slipped on a pair of tortoiseshell reading glasses as he unfolded the paper.

Jack jabbed a finger at the article on the lower half of the facing page, and Dave read aloud. Just as they had been made to do in class, sitting in rows, and reading a paragraph in turn from some dull history book, as if that somehow constituted learning.

‘Murdered after fifty years on the run.’ Dave looked up from the headline. ‘Fifty years, eh? Say it fast and it disnae seem like anything at all.’

He turned back to the paper.

Dave inclined his head towards Jack, his face sculpted from doubt. ‘How’s that possible, then?’

‘What?’

‘DNA. They didnae have DNA back then. How would they get a sample of Flet’s, even if they knew who tae test for?’ He paused. ‘And how the hell would they know that?’

Jack reached over and took the paper back. For a moment he fumbled in his pockets, then tutted his irritation. ‘Give me your glasses.’

Dave slipped them from his nose but then held them back. ‘Wait a minute. Your heid’s bigger than mine. You’ll bend the legs oot.’

Jack snatched the glasses from him and pushed them on to his face. He scanned the article in front of him then started reading.

He glanced at Dave.

‘Do you ever remember seeing that? The tattoo, I mean?’

Dave’s face set in grim recollection and he nodded.

Jack read on.

He removed his friend’s reading glasses and Dave grabbed them back, trying them on and testing them for size.

‘You have! You’ve bent the legs oot.’

But Jack wasn’t listening. He was gazing out across the water, beyond the traffic in Pollokshaws Road, towards a terrace of stone-cleaned sandstone houses.

‘I was born just over there, you know.’

Dave followed his eyeline. ‘Eh?’

‘Marywood Square. In a nursing home. That’s how they did it back then. Just a few hundred yards away from where my dad grew up in Springhill Gardens.’ He glanced back along the road towards the square of red sandstone tenements gathered around an overgrown patch of garden. ‘It’s funny. When I went to see Maurie last night, I remembered getting my tonsils out at the Victoria.’ He looked at Dave. ‘But I also remember my dad telling me the doctor came to the house and took his tonsils out on the kitchen table. Can you imagine? Seems medieval now.’

Dave breathed his exasperation. ‘Whit’s that got tae dae with this?’ And he poked a finger at the article.

Jack shrugged. ‘Nothing. Just... where did they all go, Dave?’

‘Where did what go?’

‘The years. The dreams.’ He turned a pale smile towards the other man. ‘I never thought I’d be old, Dave. Never felt old. Not really. Always just a boy in my head. Until now.’ Then focus returned to Jack’s washed-out blue eyes. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘About Maurie?’

Jack nodded.

‘Maybe we should both go tae see him, Jack. I mean, he cannae really expect us tae go off on a daft goose chase just because of some dying whim of his.’

Jack smiled. ‘No. That wouldn’t be at all responsible, would it?’

A nearby primary school had spewed children out into the cold afternoon, their shrieks and laughter rising above the rumble of traffic on Pollokshaws Road. Pigeons fluttered around a clutch of youngsters gathered at the water’s edge trying to catch something in a net. Mothers with prams stood around a play area beneath still naked trees, and the red of the sandstone tenements stood sharp and clear against a chill blue sky.

Jack and Dave walked together towards the park gate on the corner. Two elderly men, shadow people with spent lives and nothing much to show for them, invisible to the children and their young mothers. At the junction of Pollokshaws Road and Balvicar Street they shook hands and Dave headed off to get a bus home. Jack’s appointment with the dentist was imminent, but he stood for a moment watching Dave amble past the bus stop and cross the road towards the New Regent Bar, before he turned wearily away towards Victoria Road.

III

Jack got off the bus just past the Derby Café at Netherlee. The ‘Tallie’, they called it when they were kids, some corruption of ‘Italian’, because all the cafés then were Italian-owned. The Derby, Boni’s at Clarkston, and another at Busby, whose name he had forgotten. They all made the best ice cream. Single nuggets and double nuggets, and wafers and cones. Fleetingly, he wondered if ‘Tallie’ would be considered politically incorrect these days.

The road at the end of the block of shops took him down past the primary school. The car park there was almost empty, but there was a group of kids playing football on the grass, their raised voices drifting through the branches of winter trees barely in bud. By contrast the car park for the sheltered housing was almost full. Not that many of the residents had cars, but there were always staff in the building, and visiting relatives.

Jack’s heart sank as he saw his daughter and son-in-law emerging from the block of brick-red flats. They were looking less than pleased, and had nearly reached their Mondeo before they saw him coming. Their son — Jack’s grandson, Ricky — had his backside propped against the boot of the car, face buried in his Nintendo 3D gaming device as it habitually was, thumbs furiously working the buttons. Even at this distance Jack could hear the inane sounds of an animated game floating across the car park.

Susan was a sweet girl but, like her mother before her, less than assertive. Malcolm was most definitely the dominant half of the partnership. He and Jack had never been fond of each other.

Jack was not at all sure who it was that Ricky took after. From somewhere in his genetic history he had inherited the fat gene. It had not come from his parents or grandparents, but it left him constantly fighting and losing the battle of the scales. He was substantially overweight, and wore the largest and baggiest jog pants and shirts that he could find, which only ever fitted where they touched. But by way of compensation, he had been blessed with an IQ that was quite simply off a very different kind of scale. He had sailed effortlessly through school, and then university, achieving an honours degree in mathematics and computer science a year earlier than he should have. Only to find himself unemployed and, because his weight had stolen his confidence, almost unemployable. Which had led him to retreat into a nocturnal world of computer games, and to sleep away most of his daylight hours.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Malcolm had never been one to mince his words.

Jack smiled. ‘Nice to see you, too.’

‘Dad, you know we always come to see you on a Friday afternoon.’ Susan was more conciliatory, but her words still carried accusation.

‘I had a dental appointment. I forgot. I’m sorry.’

‘Hi, Grampa.’ Ricky didn’t even look up.

‘Well, you’re here now,’ Susan said, and she glanced a little nervously towards Malcolm. ‘We’ve got time at least for a cup of tea.’

‘That’ll be nice,’ Jack said. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

He took the lift to the first floor on his own while the family took the stairs. Had he been alone he would have taken the stairs himself, but this provided some moments of respite before what he knew was the coming storm. Maybe, he reflected, that was why there had been seagulls on the Queen’s Park pond. Anyway, in the end, it was why he was here. In the months after his heart attack the stairs at home had been a problem. Malcolm and Susan had put his name on the waiting list for sheltered housing. Installing a stair lift in the house would be far too expensive, Malcolm had said, and would reduce the resale value of the property.

The family had been living with Jack ever since their house had been repossessed by the bank during Malcolm’s brief period of unemployment when he was laid off by one of the major insurance companies. It was to have been a temporary arrangement. But two years on they were still there, despite Malcolm having found another position. A flat had come up in this sheltered housing complex at Netherlee sooner than any of them expected, and Jack had moved out of the downstairs lounge, where he had been sleeping, and into his own flat. Now his family were just counting the days, he was sure, until they could claim their inheritance. It made Jack uncomfortable to feel that they were just waiting for him to die, and he was damned if he was going to oblige. At least, not in the short term.

They stood waiting for him outside the door of his flat at the far end of the corridor, and Jack could hear the bloops and bleeps of Ricky’s Nintendo drifting along it.

‘Maybe you should turn the sound down, son,’ he said. ‘Some of the old folk in here are a bit sensitive to noise.’

Ricky glanced at him with irritation and began plugging in his headset.

Inside, Jack put the kettle on, delaying for as long as possible the moment when he would have to go out and face them. When finally he did, Susan was perched anxiously on the edge of the recliner and Malcolm was standing by the window staring morosely out across the lawn below to another block of sheltered housing beyond it. Ricky was sprawled on the settee, still engrossed in his game.

Malcolm turned and glanced at Susan. Her cue to speak.

‘Dad, Mrs Rodgers’ folks have been on the phone again.’

Jack knew, because Fiona had told him.

‘They say they’re going to have to insist that you stay away from their mother. If you don’t, they’re going to make a formal complaint and ask to have you removed from the complex.’

‘That’s jolly Christian of them,’ Jack said. He knew that Fiona’s family were church folk, even although Fiona described herself as ‘lapsed’.

Susan said, ‘Fiona’s told them that you’re thinking of giving up your single flats in exchange for a double.’

‘It’s disgusting, Jack.’ Malcolm pulled an appropriate face to illustrate his point.

‘Is it?’ Jack felt his hackles rising. ‘And at what age, exactly, does sex between consenting adults stop being natural and become disgusting?’

‘Dad...’ Susan was embarrassed.

‘No, tell me. When? At forty, fifty, sixty? What age are you, Malcolm, forty-five? Are you still fucking my daughter?’

‘Dad!’ This time Susan was shocked, and was on her feet in an instant.

Malcolm said, ‘That’s enough, Jack.’

‘No, it’s not! How dare you come in here and tell me who I can and can’t sleep with. Fiona and I are not a couple of teenagers. And you are not my fucking parents.’

‘Dad, for heaven’s sake watch your language in front of the boy.’

Jack nearly exploded. ‘The boy? The boy’s not even fucking listening!’

And they all turned to look at Ricky.

It took a moment before awareness invaded his game and he swung his head towards them, perplexed. ‘What?’ he said.

I

Two successive nights at the Victoria Infirmary and Jack was starting to feel like an outpatient. Being an inpatient following his heart scare, albeit briefly, had been bad enough. Beyond those critical first few hours they had moved him to a geriatric ward to complete the rest of his recovery. That was the first time it had ever occurred to him that he was ‘old’. The first time he had stood back to see himself as others saw him. An elderly, silver-haired gentleman, robust enough, but clearly past his sell-by. The all-pervading smell of urine in the ward, and a sleepless night spent listening to the wails and caterwauling of dementia patients, had persuaded him to check himself out first thing the next morning. He was damn well going to convalesce at home.

He smelled drink on Dave’s breath when they met outside the Battlefield Rest, breath that billowed around his head like smoke in the cool, still night air. Hard to believe it was April.

He said, ‘You know, I just realized on the bus tonight that it was exactly fifty years ago this month.’

Dave was puzzled. ‘What was?’

‘That we ran away to London.’

‘Really?’ He took off his cap to scratch his head. ‘Jesus. If I’d known then what I know noo...’ He caught Jack’s eye and a smile came briefly, sad and funny at the same time. ‘I’d probably still be a drunk.’

‘Aye, very likely.’ Jack took Dave’s arm. ‘Come on, let’s go see what Maurie has to say for himself.’

If anything, Maurie seemed worse than he had the previous evening. He lay with his eyes half closed, skin the colour and texture of putty, his arms lying outside the sheets, giant knuckles on withered hands. There were three nurses sitting on the end of his bed watching The Street tonight, more interested in idle chatter than anything on-screen.

‘Jesus!’ Jack said. ‘He’s foaming at the mouth!’

And the three of them jumped off the bed, turning in alarm as Maurie opened his eyes and looked confused.

‘He’s not!’ The senior nurse turned an accusatory look towards Jack, who just shrugged.

‘Aye, well, he might have been, and you wouldn’t have been any the wiser, would you?’ He held the door open. ‘Would you mind, ladies? We’ve got things to discuss here with Mr Cohen.’

All three glared at him and made their exit with a bad grace. Jack closed the door. Dave gazed at Maurie in shocked disbelief.

‘Bloody hell, mate, what have you been drinking? You look worse than me.’

Which forced a smile to Maurie’s lips. ‘Aye, well...’ he said. ‘I think my liver’s about the only thing left functioning.’ He heaved himself into a seated position. ‘Good to see you, Dave. You still playing?’

Dave flicked a glance at Jack. ‘No’ as much as I’d like, Maurie. You still singing?’

‘Like a lintie.’ Which made him laugh, which turned into a cough, and they heard phlegm and God knows what else rattling in his chest.

‘You’re in no fit state tae go tae London, boy,’ Dave said.

‘I’m as fit as I’ll ever be.’

‘Aye, well, that’s probably true.’ Dave pulled up a chair and leaned in towards Maurie. ‘Yer aff yer fucking heid, man. We cannae go tae London.’ Dave’s accent had always broadened when he got emotional. ‘We’ve nae money, nae transport, and you cannae walk. So we’re gonnae get far, eh?’

‘I’ve got money,’ Maurie said.

‘Good for you. I huvnae.’ He looked at Jack, who was watching them from the end of the bed. Then he turned sad eyes back to Maurie. ‘It’s a crazy idea, man. Give it up.’

But Maurie shook his head. ‘No.’ He looked from one to the other. ‘And if you won’t go with me, I’ll pay someone to take me.’

‘Give us one good reason why we should,’ Dave said.

‘Because it’s the right thing to do. Even if it has taken me fifty years to realize it.’

‘Jack says you’re saying it wisnae Flet who killed that guy, after all.’

Maurie nodded.

‘So who did?’

Maurie drew a deep breath. ‘You’re going to have to trust me on that.’

Dave blew air through his teeth. ‘Why?’

Maurie seemed wounded by Dave’s doubt. ‘Because we have more than fifty years of friendship between us.’ He fought to draw in another breath. ‘And what have any of us got to lose now? How long before you’re in a home, like Jack here? Or in a recovery ward. How long before we’re all bloody dead?’

Giving voice to things that none of them had dared even to think about brought a sudden reflective silence to the group. But Maurie wasn’t finished.

‘And I’ll be gone before any of you. All the regrets of my life piled up like overdrafts in a bankrupt account. Only blessing is that I’ve no kids to be ashamed of me. To cover up the legacy of a disgraced father. Disbarred for fraud and eighteen months in the Bar-L. Christ, my own family’ll hardly talk to me.’

The sudden colour in his face was unhealthy. A damaged heart working too hard to pump blood to his head.

‘Take it easy, Maurie,’ Jack said.

Maurie turned fiery eyes in his direction. ‘And what do you have to show for it all, Jack? Forty years counting other people’s money? You were talented once.’

Jack tried not to let Maurie’s words hurt him. He had built his own defences against failure long ago. ‘Lots of people are talented, Maurie. But it’s not enough on its own. You should know that better than anyone.’

Maurie couldn’t hold his gaze, and his eyes drifted off into some distant past existing now only in his memory. ‘Voice of an angel, they said.’ Then he snapped back to the present, looking from one to the other defiantly. ‘But no point regretting what you can’t change. And as long as I’m breathing, there are some things I still can.’

‘Like what?’ Dave said.

‘Well, for one thing, I’m stopping the damned chemo. The cure’s worse than the fucking ill, and it’s not curing me. So I’ll spend the rest of my days on painkillers, and I’ll not miss throwing up every five minutes.’ He paused. ‘And I’ll do what I should have done fifty years ago. Even if I can’t change it, I can put it right. I’m going, whether you come with me or not.’ He glared at them defiantly. ‘Well? We weren’t scared to run away when we were seventeen. And we had everything to lose then.’ He chuckled mirthlessly. ‘Blew it, too.’ Then he refocused. ‘Could be this is our last chance to do anything. Anything!’ He raised his eyes expectantly, shifting his gaze from one friend to the other.

The cold night air in the car park came as a shock after the stuffy heat of the hospital.

Jack breathed in deeply. ‘This is insane, Dave.’

Dave shook his head. ‘Naw. Running away tae the Big Smoke when we were seventeen, that was insane. This is much worse.’ He turned a serious face towards his co-conspirator, before a big smile wiped years off it.

Jack said, ‘We’re going to need transport. And someone to drive. I’m still not allowed.’ He glanced at Dave.

‘Aye, I know. And I’m no’ to be trusted.’

The sky above them was a sparkling black velvet, a gibbous moon rising into view above Langside College. The sound of traffic filled the air. ‘Dave... I’m only going to do this if you promise to stay off the drink. At least until it’s all over.’

Dave grinned. ‘Nae problem. Man of steel, me. Iron willpower.’

Jack looked at him sceptically and sighed, then turned to look up at the ugly black edifice of the infirmary towering above them. ‘And we’re going to have to figure out some way of getting Maurie out of there.’

II

He sat for a long time in the dark. Light from the street lamps in the car park fell through his window in long, dissected slabs that lay across the floor. He had not brought much with him from the home he had shared with Jenny for nearly thirty-seven years. A leather recliner and footstool. A two-seater settee that folded down into a bed for guests who never came. There was a bookcase full of the books he had read as a young man, when ideas were fresh and new and a whole generation believed they could change the world. How naive had they been?

A signed Russell Flint watercolour hung on the wall facing the window. A girl on a beach with a headscarf and a large fishing net on a pole. Wonderful light on sands recently uncovered by the receding tide. It had come from his parents’ house, one of two that had been his mother’s pride and joy. And yet, they could only, surely, have been a constant reminder of her own thwarted ambition?

A large flat-screen TV, bought for the flat, simmered silently in a shadowed corner, only the red standby light betraying its presence. A drop-leaf table was pushed against the wall by the door to a tiny kitchen that was little more than a scullery.

This was his space. These were his things. This was his life. Everything diminished to fit within the confines of these four walls.

He hated to admit it to himself. But he was lonely. He missed Jenny. Even though she had never been the love of his life, she was the one he had settled for. And they had always been friends, sharing a life of extraordinary ordinariness together. A life like so many others, treading water in a sea of mediocrity, until sinking without trace. Which she had done nine years ago, stolen away by her cancer.

He pushed himself up out of the recliner and crossed stiffly to the bookcase below the window. Why did everything hurt, these days? Her photograph stood in an elaborately worked pewter frame, a gift from Susan. He lifted it and tilted it towards the light, and her smile filled him with sadness. He ran his fingertips lightly over the glass, as if maybe he could still touch her. But the feel of it beneath his fingers was cold and hard.

She was, perhaps, in her early forties here. She had probably been dyeing her hair even then, but the illusion of youth was successful enough. It was a photograph he had taken himself, and it was something about the love in her eyes that had always touched him. And he wondered if she had ever realized that he didn’t love her back. Not really. And yet, what was love? For hadn’t he been devastated in the losing of her?

He replaced the frame carefully on the bookcase and turned his watch towards the light from the window. Time to tell her.

He double-checked that his keys were in his pocket before he pulled the door shut, and slipped as quietly as he could along the hall. His footsteps echoed faintly back at him from the walls and glass of the stairwell as he climbed slowly to the second floor. The door of her flat was at the end of the corridor, large windows facing out towards the school.

He knocked softly and waited in the thick silence of the night, breathing deeply to catch his breath. He didn’t hear her approach before the door opened and she peered out anxiously into the hall. Her smile lit the darkness when she saw him, and the door opened wider to let him in. He saw immediately that she’d had her hair done. A sheer silk nightdress tumbled almost to the floor beneath her open gown. He smelled her perfume and felt the familiar stirrings of desire. Feelings that never went away. Along with the need for someone to share a shrinking life.

She closed the door and turned to face him expectantly. He slipped his arms around her, drawing her to him, and felt her warmth and her softness. He lay his head on her shoulder for a moment, before kissing her neck and then stepping back to look at her. Something in his eyes or his demeanour said more than he ever could, and her smile faded. A woman’s instinct.

‘What’s wrong?’

He steeled himself. ‘Fiona, I’ve got to go away for a while.’

And it struck him that this was really just history repeating itself.

Half a century later.