Dead men and broken hearts

CHAPTER TWENTY

As if to reinforce my decision, I drove past my digs and, sure enough, the Jowett Javelin was parked outside. White’s visits were obviously becoming more frequent and less discreet. I drove on. Decision made and confirmed.

Back in the office I sat at my desk and did a few calculations. Or re-calculations. The classified ad I had circled in the evening paper had been for a largish top floor apartment in Kelvin Court, a six-storey complex on Great Western Road. The apartment was considerably more up-scale than the places I’d looked at so far; Kelvin Court was an elegant Art Deco building that had been put up in the late Thirties. But it wasn’t the style or the size of the flat that set it apart: what had made it an unusual choice for me was that it wasn’t for rent, it was for sale. And that would mean, for the first time in ten years, putting real roots down in Glasgow.

When I had considered buying the flat, I had sat at my desk and totalled up all of the accounts and stashes I had put together since Germany, including my Nibelungengold — the little superannuation plan I’d arranged for myself in Hamburg and to which Hopkins had alluded. All together it was a tidy sum: enough to place me in the property-owning classes.

But that had been before my epiphany.

As I had sat watching that small boy play in the waste ground’s oily muck, a revelation had come to me. A revelation so clear and bright and shining, it made any received by Abraham, Moses or Mohammed look equivocal and woolly. And what had been burned into my particular stone tablet had been simple: Lennox, what the FUCK are you doing here?

Naturally, it wasn’t just the little roadside tableau that had convinced me, there was the nagging sting every time I thought about how Fiona White had rejected me for some insignificant little pen-pusher. And, of course, Canada was a long way for Hopkins to reach, although I guessed he could, if he put his mind to it.

So now, instead of calculating down-payments and mortgages for a property that would anchor me in Glasgow, or how much I could afford on a new car to drive at walking pace through the smog, I was working out how much I could mail and wire to an account in Canada, and how much it would be safe to carry on me.

I made several ’phone calls that afternoon. By the time I was finished I had the dates and prices of passage to Halifax, Nova Scotia and quotes per crate for shipping my stuff back. After the last call, I swung my captain’s chair around so I could look out of my office window at the dark graphite sky above the darker hulk of Central Station. Lighting a cigarette, despite the gloom I felt bathed in a warm light and resisted the urge to yell ‘So long, suckers!’ at the commuters bustling in and out under the ornate wrought iron of the station’s entrance canopy.

Glasgow was bad for me. And I was none too good for it. There had been a time, right after the war, when we had suited each other, but the way things had been going, and despite all of my efforts to clean up my act, the truth was I knew too many of the wrong people here and had gotten involved in too many of the wrong kind of goings-on. I had pinned too much on Fiona White without knowing what it was I was pinning on her. The truth was, just like me and Glasgow, Fiona and I would probably be better off without each other.

Somewhere along the line, I had gotten it into my head that I wasn’t ready, wasn’t clean enough to go home to Canada, as if I had been loitering in Glasgow in some kind of quarantine, afraid of taking my contamination back home with me. Everything Hopkins had said to me about my past, about the dead men and broken hearts in my wake, had been true, and I guessed I’d always been afraid to drag the ghost of my recent past, like Jacob Marley’s chains, back to Canada.

Growing up in Saint John had been a different time, a different place — and I had been a different person. The Kennebecasis Kid, all big ideals and big ambitions. Or maybe I hadn’t, and it just took the war to unlock whatever it was that lay waiting to turn me into a wartime killer and a post-war asshole.

Maybe it was possible to become the Kennebecasis Kid again. Or something like him. My folks were still back there and, even though he had officially retired, my father was a big enough figure in the community to pull a few strings for his prodigal. Maybe I couldn’t put it all behind me, but I could have a damn good try. At the very least, it would save me the depressing prospect of looking for new digs in Glasgow.

I took a few runs at the wording of a cable to my folks, but decided it would be best to wait till I had everything sorted. There was always the chance that I might wake up the following morning full of forgiveness for Fiona’s rejection and a new-found love of squashed-flat square sausage, Scotch and smog.

But I wasn’t counting on it.

I left the office before five.

It was late night closing and I headed to R.W. Forsyth’s, on the corner of Renfield Street and Jamaica Street — a stone’s throw from my office. It was a convenience that had cost me dear over the years: Forsyth’s was a six-floor, top-end tailor and gentleman’s outfitter and I had had a habit there of spending out of proportion to my income. The salesmen in Forsyth’s styled themselves as ‘gentlemen’s gentlemen’ and it always disconcerted me how pleased they were to see me. There was such a thing as being too good a customer.

I was welcomed by ‘Robert’ who had served me before. The Ronald Coleman-type moustache on his upper lip looked like the product of pencil and ruler, and he was immaculately turned out and barbered in a way that was more prissy than well-groomed. I had guessed long ago that Robert was a gentleman’s gentleman in more ways than one. He had an effeminate way of speaking, which was emphasized by his attempts to sound cultured and approximate what he thought a gentleman should sound like, despite his grammar having shadows of Govan in it.

I explained to Robert that all I needed was four shirts, four pairs of socks and some underwear: I had decided not to go back to my digs that night and needed the change of clothes. Robert looked disappointed, but I wasn’t sure if it was because I had bought too little or that what I had bought didn’t call for him measuring my inside leg. If he was disappointed with that, he was devastated when I answered his question about if I wanted everything I had bought put on my account.

‘No thanks, I’ll pay cash. In fact, while I’m at the cash desk I’ll settle my outstanding balance. I’m closing my account.’

Robert looked shocked; crestfallen in the unique manner of the salesman on commission.

‘Oh jings no, Mr Lennox. I am very sorry to hear that. After all of these years? I do so hope you’re no’ dissatisfied with the service with what we’ve endeavoured to provide you with.’

‘No, no… it’s not that at all, Robert. It’s just that I’m probably going to be… out of town… for a while.’

‘Well, Mr Lennox, we are always here at your disposal, so we are.’

I told him I appreciated it and left with my packages tucked under my arm. I dumped them in the boot of the Atlantic before heading up to Sauchiehall Street. I went into Copland and Lye and, after picking up a new shaving kit and some toiletries, bought two suitcases and a trunk and arranged for them to be delivered to my office the next morning.

Finding a hotel room in Glasgow in November was never going to be difficult.

The Paragon Hotel was in the West End and across the narrow street it faced the Glasgow School of Art, an ornate Art Deco Mackintosh-designed building of which Glaswegians were almost religiously proud. Maybe it was just my contrary and cussed turn of mind, but the Art School building always struck me as out of proportion with the street it was on and reminded me of some overly ornate Viennese bus station.

What the Paragon Hotel was a paragon of remained a mystery to me, unless it was mediocrity. It was neither good nor bad, and its blandness somehow fitted with my need for the nondescript and anonymous. The cute copper-redhead behind the reception desk certainly wasn’t mediocre. She was about twenty-two or — three with pale green eyes and an exemplary set of curves and looked very pleased to see me. I didn’t know if it was my boyish charm that won her over or if she was just relieved to get a booking at that time of year. She asked how long I would be staying in the hotel and I paid for three nights in advance, telling her that it could be longer, but I would let them know over the next couple of days.

For some reason I did not fully understand, I checked in under a phoney name, telling the redhead I was a Mr Kelvin. This small act of deception surprised even me, and I told myself that I had done it as a precaution, given the interest that Hopkins had taken in me of late and his fondness for attaching invisible tails to anyone he thought might be worth the scrutiny. The truth was probably more that I needed a rest from being me; or maybe it was part of my transition back to an earlier definition of me. Whatever the reason, my pseudonym gave me a strange comfort.

The redhead gave me the key to number twelve and I told her I could find my own way up, despite my instinct to follow her up a staircase. She informed me that there was a shared bathroom at the end of the hall and announced, with great pride, that the hotel now boasted, on the second floor, that most up-to-date of conveniences: a Television Lounge. I thanked her and went up to my room, a square functional box with no view to speak of. The bathroom, common to all rooms on the floor, was reasonably clean and I washed, shaved and patted my jaw fresh with cologne before changing into one of my new shirts. The dining room was on the ground floor and my table was set into the bay window, looking out across the street. Only two other tables were occupied, one by an older couple with a gangly, bookish-looking daughter. Cherishing my quiet anonymity, I took no interest in the other diners, who returned my indifference. The meal was perfect: bland and forgettable.

Then I went up to my room and turned in early.

I slept like a baby.