Strange Loyalties

34

Even for a messenger of darkness, which is presumably what Jan would have seen Melanie McHarg as being, practical preparations have to be made. At the hotel I showered and shaved and dressed. I ordered continental breakfast for two — orange juice, croissants and coffee — to be delivered at ten o’clock. It arrived a couple of minutes before Marty Bleasdale knocked at the door.

They came in and Marty introduced us. Melanie McHarg had an appearance that caught the attention. But she was a sketch of attractiveness rather than its fulfilled image, a sketch that seemed to be undergoing erasure and alteration. Her body moved gracefully but it wasn’t the way you felt it should be. It was too fine-drawn. The features of her face needed filling out. The dark hair lacked sheen. Only the eyes were vivid. They were bright blue, honest and startlingly vulnerable. She was wearing jeans, blouse and black cotton jacket.

Marty said, ‘Ah’ll leave you two to talk. Ah’ll be downstairs. Take it easy, Jack.’

I nodded and he went out. We sat down at the low table. Breakfast allowed us to deflect our awkwardness into small actions. I poured the coffee. She sipped orange juice and picked at a croissant. She took neither milk nor sugar. I took both.

‘Thanks for coming to talk to me,’ I said.

‘I’ve heard of you,’ she said. ‘The people I used to mix with sometimes talked about you. They weren’t exactly fans. But they did have a grudging admiration. It made me think I could trust you.’

‘I hope so,’ I said.

‘Marty’s told you about me?’

‘Some,’ I said. ‘I hope you make it out of the drugs.’

At the mention of her situation, her eyes looked even more naked. I saw how raw she must be, as if her skin didn’t quite cover her.

‘So do I,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I’m leaving for Canada today. For a while. I’ve got a sister lives in Oshawa. It’s outside Toronto. Maybe I’ll find I’ve still got some kind of life to live.’

‘Of course, you have,’ I said. She looked about mid-thirties. ‘You have.’

‘How did you hear about me?’

‘I’ve got a brother just died,’ I said. ‘Thirty-eight.’

I didn’t know why I said his age. Maybe I was still accusing the world of a misdemeanour. Her eyes stared at me with immediate compassion. She had the openness of pain to share the pain of others. We looked at each other as if we had met a while ago.

‘And I went down to Ayrshire. Where he lived. I suppose I’ve been trying to understand his death. And I talked to a lot of people. One of them was Fast Frankie White.’

She began immediately and very loudly to cry. The name had unlocked her. I was astonished. I stood up and went across and put my arm round her. I was assuming she must have been involved with Frankie at one time. But it wasn’t that. As she started to talk through her tears, I realised that it wasn’t Frankie himself evoking the reaction but bigger things that his name stood as cipher for, like a phrase of a song evoking past times.

The weeping breached her self-containment and a lot of words came out. It was an autobiography in fragments. The impromptu abstract I made of it as I listened suggested that it wasn’t exactly a unique story but it was not less moving for that.

I could imagine how good-looking she had been in her late teens. A Glasgow jeweller whose name I knew had taken her up. His name had been in vogue in the city at the time in certain places. He would be in his late twenties then and living what passed for the fast life. There were cars and trips abroad and a lot of parties. He introduced her to many people, including Matt Mason, and to a style of living as progressive as a merry-go-round. When he jumped off, landing softly on his money, he left her there.

Her chief talent had been her looks and she admitted she had used them. I felt that she was mourning more than lost time. She was grieving for what she had allowed time to take from her in the going.

‘I kept my vanity for a while,’ she said. ‘But I lost my pride.’

‘I’m terrified,’ she said. ‘You know what frightens me most? I’m afraid I can’t love anybody. Vanity can’t do that. Only pride can.’

Her fear, set against the confused and broken details of her life, made a kind of sense to me. Thinking she was using other people, she had let them use her in small, seedy ways. Her vanity had been pleased by the flattery of being used. (‘I’m still attractive, I’m still liked.’) Vanity can use using but it can’t use love. One reaffirms vanity, the other calls it in question. She had become addicted to other people’s uses for her and, when they waned, she made the addiction chemical.

Dan Scoular had happened to her between the soft dependency and the hard. She had seen him as someone she could love. When that chance went, she didn’t believe in the chances any more. He had reminded her of where she came from, values she had lost, and with his departure from her life any pretence of recapturing them went too. She knew herself a long distance from where she should have been and no way back. She settled for letting herself use Meece and Meece use her. It had been a fragile union, balanced on a needle point.

As she mentioned Dan Scoular yet again, I gathered from her remark that she did not know he was dead. I weighed the hurt she didn’t know with the hurt she did, and I thought one might help to absorb the other. I told her. I held her shoulders while they shook like wings that had lost the power of flight but were taking a long time to accept it. She became eventually very still and very quiet.

‘Excuse me,’ she said.

I released her. She took her handbag and went into the bathroom. I looked at the cold coffee. I thought of being in Rico’s with Eddie Foley. I wasn’t doing well with coffees. Maybe some year I would finish one. I rinsed out the cups in the wash-hand basin and put them on the tray. I noticed the croissant she had been plucking at. It lay in several pieces on her plate, less a meal than a blueprint for a meal.

I was staring at the croissant when I decided. I couldn’t ask her to do what I had intended to ask her to do. She was too wounded. She had been through too much to be put through any more.

When she came out of the bathroom, she had done her face skilfully but the make-up was a mask from behind which the eyes looked out warily. She sat back down.

‘How did Dan Scoular die?’ she said.

‘He was run down by a car.’

‘Run down?’

‘We think Matt Mason killed him. We don’t know that. But we think he did.’

‘And Meece?’

‘Well, what do you think?’

She nodded. Though the eyes were still nervous, the face set cold around them.

‘Why did you want to see me?’

‘There was something I thought of asking you to do.’

‘What’s that?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It was probably always a wild idea. And the way you are just now, it’s just not on.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Let’s forget it.’

‘Tell me.’

I told her. She stared a long time at the floor.

‘Could I have a drink, please?’

‘What do you take?’

‘Gin and tonic would do.’

I broke the seal on the drinks cabinet and gave her what she wanted.

‘I think I’ll join you,’ I said.

I found another tumbler in the bathroom. I poured out a miniature of whisky and filled it up with water. I put the empty bottles in the bin. I sat down opposite her while she thought about it.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘You should understand the details. And there’s somebody else involved.’

I explained to her. She took another sip of her drink.

‘All right,’ she said.

‘Maybe you should think longer about it.’

‘I’m leaving anyway,’ she said. ‘Maybe this is one way to pay my respects to Dan Scoular before I go. And Meece as well. Meece wasn’t all bad, you know.’

We clinked glasses. I gave her some more time.

‘So I can phone these people?’

She nodded. I phoned Edek Bialecki. He would come to the hotel immediately. I phoned Eddie Foley. I arranged where I wanted him to meet me. I phoned Brian Harkness and asked him to bring Bob to the hotel. Reception said they would page Mr Bleasdale and ask him to come up to the room.

When Marty found out what we were proposing to do, he tried to dissuade Melanie. But she stayed firm. I think I went down in his estimation. He refused a drink on the grounds that he didn’t like attending wakes. The arrival of Edek made Marty disown the whole proceedings. He stood looking out of the window while we discussed things. Looking at Melanie’s jeans, Edek said she would have to change.

‘Ah know where we can check out some costumes. We should be able to get something.’

‘Make it a shroud,’ Marty said.