Strange Loyalties

8

I imagined a party. That is not a difficult thing for me to do. It has always been a word liable to send my mind off in pursuit of its fabulous nature, like El Dorado.

This was a big party. It took place in a house in Marrenden Drive, which is a street in Troon, a town not far from Graithnock. Troon is an interestingly Scottish town. It has for a long time had a shipyard. It has also for a long time been a fairly popular coastal resort, where quite a few well-off people have chosen to live. Therefore, it has, like most things Scottish, a dual nature. It is both rough and genteel. Visitors may have to find the roughness for themselves. The gentility will be more obvious. A passer-by might be forgiven for wondering if they toilet-train the seagulls.

But then that modest gentility sub-divides itself into its own duality, for it conceals not only the fact that some people have much harder lives than the town suggests but the fact that some people have much softer ones. There is considerable wealth here. Marrenden Drive is where some of that wealth resides. In the slightly Calvinist forthrightness of the place, Marrenden Drive is a well-hidden softness, like a secret and surprisingly lush garden where discreet riches bloom into stone.

The house where the party was held was large and sat in its own grounds. That night it must have been lit up like a small city. Its owner was known for a certain lavishness. His name was Dave Lyons and he had many business interests, though perhaps only he knew what they all were. Besides the house in Marrenden Drive, he appeared to have a place in Edinburgh, where his business was conducted.

There were maybe sixty or seventy people present at the party. The guest-list was varied. Dave Lyons was a self-made man who had, like a lot of us, played at rebelliousness in his youth and had continued to maintain loose friendships with people from different areas of society. The party would be an expression of his socially eclectic life, with all its disparate elements seemingly reconciled in an atmosphere of warmth and celebration.

As the evening progressed, the whole house came into use. The party broke up into side-shows, as parties often will. People stood in the kitchen, trapped in one of those drink-assisted debates that seem at the time like the most important issue in the world. In the dining-room, some were pecking at the remains of the very impressive buffet. Music was playing in the spacious lounge, where disorderly dancing was taking place. Who knows what else was happening in other rooms? But upstairs, in what Dave Lyons called the television room, some four or five people sat around, watching a programme. They seem not to have noticed that someone had come in and stood behind their chairs, looking over their heads at the images on the screen. But they couldn’t help noticing what he was soon to do.

The room was in darkness apart from the light of the television set. In that peaceful dimness, where people lolled with glasses in their hands, what happened must have been like an air-raid on a pleasure beach. A very large crystal vase passed above their heads in a deadly trajectory and converged with the television screen. The set, balanced on one ornately decorative, spindly leg, keeled backwards on to the floor, where it is reported to have expired in a not un-musical jangle of guts. Someone dropped a glass. A woman screamed. Panicked movements took place in the dark, suggestive of the aftermath of a terrorist attack. Someone put on the light. There, nodding benevolently at everyone, was a man who appeared to think he was on the rostrum at a march-past in his honour. He was identified as Scott Laidlaw.

The fuel for my imagination had come from Anna, through John Strachan by way of Mhairi Strachan. But I suspect my sense of the event isn’t too wildly divergent from the facts. Anna, it seems, outlined the entire evening for Mhairi in vivid detail. The whole thing was, Anna had said, carved on her memory. It must have made a fair impact. Those were dramatic words for Anna, whose normal social discourse seemed to me to have all the authenticity of an air-hostess’s smile. She had also said that the night had been the last straw for her and in that less resonant phrase I thought I recognised her more habitual tone.

Anna had assiduously collected the contextualising details of Scott’s social philistinism and relayed them at length to more than Mhairi. I thought the reason was perhaps the need for self-justification that tends to come to people prior to the foreseen break-up of a relationship, like an outrider warning them to cover their flanks. I could imagine her going the rounds in that way that I’ve known friends of mine to do, holding a public roup of their former commitment, so that it may become clear that there is no longer any reason for them to stay.

I had to admit she seemed to have a case. The impossibility of living with Scott appeared to have been caught in flagrante. After John Strachan had told me, we both sat silent for a while, in the lounge of the Bushfield. He sipped his pint, I sipped my whisky. The grandiose folly of Scott’s gesture was both arresting and incomprehensible. It replayed itself endlessly in my mind like some demented fiddle-tune — Laidlaw’s Farewell to the Social Life. But were there any words to it? What did it mean?

‘This Dave Lyons,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard of him. But not from Scott himself. Just sometimes from Scott and Anna together. Had Scott fallen out with him?’

‘I don’t know. I think they knew each other better when they were younger. Maybe it was one of those relationships that just survive on habit. Past any reason that either of them understood any more.’

‘I was wondering why Scott attacked his telly. Was it a resentment of his money? But that seems a pretty pathetic target to go for. Who hasn’t got a TV? It’s not exactly the first thing you’d associate with Rockefeller.’

‘No,’ John Strachan said. ‘You’re not going to get them to man the barricades with that one. Death to the telly-owning oppressors.’

‘Do you know him yourself?

‘Dave Lyons? I’ve seen him. But I don’t know him personally.’

‘So you obviously wouldn’t know his phone number.’

John Strachan looked at me and started to laugh. He shook his head.

‘You’re a very indirect man, aren’t you? What are you going to do? Phone up and say, “Hullo, it’s about your broken telly”?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t be as abrupt as that. I could phone up and say, “Hullo. It’s nice to meet you. Now it’s about your broken telly.”’

‘Oh, that’s fine,’ he said. ‘Given that reassurance, I can help. I know somebody who should have the number. I’ll try him.’

He went out to the pay-phone in the hall and I crossed to get us in another drink. Things were picking up at the bar. Gestures were becoming more expansive. Three separate groups had connected up loosely. I was introduced to one of the Danish residents. His name was Søren, which endeared him to me immediately. But unlike Kierkegaard, he seemed never to have experienced angst. He had a face like a baby which has just discovered tickling. His mood was infectious. A late night in the Bushfield looked to be in the offing.

John Strachan came back with the number and the address. The sight of a fresh pint seemed to make him nervous. He would have to be getting back to Mhairi. I thanked him for his help and we talked a little longer and I told him how much the painting of the five men at the table had interested me.

When he was gone, I went to the pay-phone and dialled the number he had given me. The voice that answered was strong and self-assured.

‘Yes?’

‘Hullo. Is that Mr Lyons?’

‘It is. Who’s this?’

‘I’m sorry to bother you. My name’s Jack Laidlaw. I’m Scott Laidlaw’s brother.’

‘Ah, hullo. I was really sorry to hear about Scott. It was a terrible loss.’

‘Yes. I was wondering, Mr Lyons. I’m in Ayrshire just now. I suppose you could call it a kind of sentimental journey. I’m just trying to sort out my feelings about Scott’s death. And I wondered if I could talk to you some time this week.’

He hadn’t sounded like the sort of man who would hesitate as long as this.

‘Excuse me. Where did you get my number?’

It was my turn to hesitate, since I didn’t know where his number had come from. I could hear what I thought was Mozart faintly in the background.

‘I was going through some of Scott’s papers. And your number came up.’ I was embarrassed by the way it came out. I had made it sound rather ominous: this is death on the line. ‘I mean, I found your telephone number. And I thought, as a friend of Scott’s, you were somebody I would like to talk to. I had lost touch a bit with him at the end. I’d just like to see him more clearly.’

‘Papers?’ he said. ‘What kind of papers were these?’

It was a strange question, not to say impertinent. That interested me. It seemed to imply that there might be papers Dave Lyons would be worried about. My casually evasive movement might have bumped against something solid. I decided to move carefully.

‘Just some of Scott’s things.’

‘Well, I’m very busy this week. Normally, I’d be in Edinburgh and it wouldn’t be possible anyway. But I’m working from home this week. I’m sorry but the schedule’s pretty tight.’

‘It wouldn’t take long, Mr Lyons. There’s something in particular I’d like to talk to you about.’

‘What would that be?’

Papers, significant papers, I hoped my pause was suggesting. ‘It’s a bit complicated to go into on the phone.’

I suspected his silence was debating whether it was better to close me off now or to check out what I thought it was I had. There was something here. I sensed it.

‘Tell you what. I really am busy this week. There’s not much time I can give you. But tomorrow. I have a business lunch. At Cranston Castle House. If you’re there round about twoish. We can maybe have a few minutes. But only a few. It’s the best I can do.’

‘It’s great,’ I said. ‘I appreciate it.’

‘You know where it is?’

‘Not exactly. But I’ll find it.’

‘All right, then. I’ll see you then.’

I was looking forward to meeting him. When I came back into the lounge, my evening went into a higher gear. The talk covered a lot of ground fast. The Happy Dane and I found we both liked Kris Kristofferson. A stranger offered me his condolences and told me that an old man called Sanny Wilson had met Scott in a bar the night he was killed. Sanny had told the man something he remembered. Scott had said at one point, ‘The man in the green coat has died again.’ I was intrigued. The man said that, if I was still here tomorrow night, he would try and bring Sanny Wilson in to tell me about it himself. I said I thought I would still be here.

After closing time, the residents stayed on in the lounge. A guitar-player who had come in after doing a gig in another pub decided to become a resident as well for the night. We had a sing-song. In the pauses during it, I had a long, rambling, self-revelatory conversation with Katie. I sang ‘Cycles’ when it was first my turn. Later, when the mood had been established by the right amount of alcohol, I gave them ‘The Learig’, perhaps Scott’s favourite song. As a reward, I received a lot of advice on how to locate Cranston Castle House.

I might have been in the lounge yet, so good was it, except that I wanted to keep some brain-cells for tomorrow. I took my farewell of everybody as if I had known them all my life. Before going upstairs, I went out to the car and collected Scott’s painting and the bottle of whisky. It seemed a matter of tremendous urgency there and then. When I came back in, I had a brilliant idea. It did not occur to me at the time that it was the same kind of brilliant idea that Caesar had when he decided to go to the Capitol. I rang Jan’s number. Fortunately, no one answered.

In my room, I unveiled Scott’s painting and set it up against the wall. I stripped and sat on the bed and looked at those images of Scotland. I opened the bottle of whisky. I communed with art and had a long conversation with the Antiquary, recalling old times. I put out the light and went to bed.

I woke up suddenly in the darkness with two thoughts, distinct as nightlights, in my mind.

The man in the painting of the five at supper was wearing a green coat.

How do you die twice?