The Papers of Tony Veitch

13

‘. . in this crowd deaf to its own cry of hunger and misery, revolt and hatred, in this crowd so strangely garrulous and dumb.’

Gus Hawkins was reading the end of the sentence again when the knock came at the door. He was eating a folded slice of bread and jelly, a Saturday lunchtime return to the comfort food of childhood, and drinking the last of his tea. His mother was clearing the table. His father sat in his armchair, a telly cataleptic. Gus made to get up.

‘Ah’ll get it, son,’ his mother said. ‘It’s likely Maggie from downstairs.’

But her startled ‘Oh’ as she opened the door made Gus look up to see his brother standing there, wearing his scar like an embarrassing admission in front of his mother of the kind of work he did. He gave her an operatic embrace and winked over her shoulder at Gus. His jollity was a smoke-screen.

‘How’s the best wee ma in Britain? Aye, Da. Ah’ve got a mate with me, Ma. We’re here to talk to Mastermind there.’

‘Jimmy! Ah thought ye’d forgotten the address.’

What should have been anger became laughter in her mouth by the alchemy that enables mothers to transmute their children into what they believe them to be.

‘No chance. This is a mate up from Birmingham. Mickey Ballater.’

Gus looked at the big man who stepped in behind his brother. Whatever he did in Birmingham, he wasn’t a bank-clerk. Gus’s mother shut the door.

‘Come in, son. Come in. Mickey, is it? Ah’ll make a cuppa tea. We’re just finished. Gus comes every Saturday fur his dinner. Then Ah know he’s gettin’ at least wan good meal in the week. Ah don’t know why he canny stay here a’ thegither. But that’s the young yins nowadays.’

‘Ah know whit ye mean,’ Mickey Ballater said.

‘Ma. Don’t bother wi’ tea. We’re on our way somewhere. We were passin’ an’ we jist came in to settle an argument. Ah told ’im ma brother’s a genius. He would know.’

Gus realised that his brother was improvising desperately, didn’t know what to say next. Hook Hawkins noticed that the doorway to the balcony was open and continued talking.

‘Look, we’ll no’ disturb ma Da’s telly. We’ll nip out on the balcony. Okay, Gus?’

He went out onto the balcony, followed by Mickey Ballater.

‘Fair view, innit?’ he said.

‘No’ bad at all.’

Gus put down his book slowly. He looked at his mother and couldn’t be sure whether her expression was what she really felt or a determined cover-up. It seemed to suggest her older son was an awful wag. Gus crossed and stepped out onto the balcony.

Three was a crowd out there. It was thirteen storeys up and Mickey Ballater seemed impressed.

‘Never seen the Gorbals from this high up. Seen it from doon there, right enough. Surprised how wee it is. When Ah wis in among it, Ah thought it went on forever. Ah suppose this is progress, eh?’

Gus said nothing. Half of his head was still dealing with Aimé Césaire’s Return to my Native Land. He hadn’t worked out how he came to be standing on the balcony of his parents’ house with his brother and another heavy. He was waiting to catch up with events.

‘Gus,’ Hook said. ‘Mickey wants to ask you about Tony.’

‘Tony who?’

‘Come on, Gus. Tony Veitch.’

‘Tony Veitch? What’s this about?’

‘Tony Veitch,’ Mickey said.

‘What’s he to you?’

‘Money,’ Mickey said. ‘That’s what he is. Just money.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He owes me money.’

‘Tony owes you money?’

‘Ah’ve come a long way,’ Mickey said. ‘It’s gettin’ to feel longer. Ah didn’t do it for nothin’. He owes me money.’

Gus saw his father still watching television, his mother clearing up. The programme was an old film on BBC2, a grey actor talking nonsense to a grey actress listening nonsensically. It was the kind of film about which the clever Sunday papers would find something clever to say, like ‘a delicate sense of period’ or ‘survives in spite of itself’. It was just crap, a lot of people making what money they could in the way they knew best.

Gus felt angry. Why was his father watching it? He had had a life more harrowing than any of their melodramas. And he hadn’t once seen what had happened to him shown on that screen. Gus saw his parents in cameo, peripheral to this moment, peripheral to their own sons, frozen into decoration. He resented it. His anger spilled over.

‘What’s this about?’ he said to his brother.

‘Mickey’s just askin’ a question,’ Hook said. ‘Where’s Tony Veitch?’

‘Naw.’ Gus was staring at his brother. ‘What’s this about?’

‘Where’s Tony Veitch?’ Mickey said.

Gus didn’t look at him.

‘I’m talking to my brother,’ he said. ‘What’s this about?’

‘Gus,’ Hook Hawkins said. ‘People are lookin’ for Tony.’

Gus looked at his parents a moment.

‘Why don’t you organise gang-fights in the kitchen?’ he said. ‘You bring a hoodlum to ma mammy’s house?’

‘Listen,’ Mickey said.

‘Naw. You listen.’ Gus Hawkins looked like a bomb that might soon explode. He was staring at Ballater. ‘This is where good people live. We don’t need you.’

A signal went off in Mickey Ballater’s head. He remembered a chip-shop in the Calton. He had been young and hard and drunk, and he had casually insulted a small, middle-aged man. He had said for the titillation of bystanders, ‘Somebody in here’s fartit. It wis you!’ pointing at the small man. The small man had said nothing, paid for his chips and gone out.

Mickey Ballater had forgotten he said it by the time he came out the door, when he forgot everything for several minutes. He worked out later that the small man must have hit him from the side as he came out, presumably with a gib-crane he had handy. Since then, Ballater had understood that the fiercest man is the one who has had his incomprehensibly private values encroached upon. Attack a mouse in its hole and it will try to nibble you to death.

This was no mouse. He saw one of an endlessly repeated species, the young who haven’t found their limits yet and wonder if you could help them. Gus Hawkins was puffed out like a cockerel with his own aggression. He had started before Mickey had even thought of it.

Mickey knew that steel to steel the boy had no chance. Six days a week, Mickey would kill him. But this was one of those seventh days — wrong time, wrong place. It wasn’t why he had come. So he had recourse to a feeble gesture.

‘Wait a minute!’ he said.

Gus Hawkins waited. Mickey found it useful that Hook Hawkins intervened.

‘Listen, you,’ Hook said.

‘Jim!’ Gus said at once. ‘Don’t give me your routine. I’m your brother. In my book you’re just a liberty-taker. We’re where you come from. Don’t try to frighten us. I’ll put up with you. But I really don’t need his nonsense. He doesn’t behave, I’ll show him a quick road down.’

He nodded to the pavement thirteen storeys below. Mickey Ballater couldn’t believe how silly the boy was but he was trying to. This was unbelievable but it was happening. What struck him was how seriously Hook was taking it.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Hook was saying. ‘You get a grip. The man’s just askin’ a question. Tony owes him money.’

‘I don’t believe that.’

‘But it’s true,’ Mickey said.

‘Tony Veitch’s got money. His mother left him it. He doesny need to owe anybody.’

‘Ah don’t mean he borrowed it,’ Mickey said. ‘Ah just said he owes it.’

‘What for?’

‘That’s ma business.’

‘Fine. Take it with you when you go out. Like as fast as your legs’ll carry you.’

Hook held up his hand to forestall Mickey. He looked down at two boys playing with a ball.

‘Gus. Ye’re no’ in a book now, son. This is serious business. Ah didny want to come here. Ah tried for ye at the flat. Then Ah knew ye wid be here for yer dinner. There’s people in a hurry tae find where Tony Veitch is. Mickey’s just one o’ them.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Big John Rhodes is lookin’. And Cam Colvin.’

Gus looked from one to the other, unbelieving.

‘Come on. Tony blew his finals.’ He laughed. ‘Is Cam a member of the University Senate?’

‘Whatever that is, Ah think your Tony did a bit more than that,’ Mickey said.

‘They reckon he did Paddy Collins,’ Hook explained.

Gus stood looking over the balcony as if he had never seen the view before. He started to laugh and stopped and looked at the sky. When he looked back at them, his certainty was already clouding.

‘Tony?’

‘Tony,’ Hook said.

‘But why would he do that?’

‘He owed Paddy as well,’ Mickey said. ‘I came up and we were gonny collect together. By the time I get here, Paddy’s dead. Veitch’s shot the crow. Looks a bit that way, doesn’t it?’

‘You reckon?’ Gus was looking at Hook.

Hook nodded.

‘So what’s it got to do with me?’

‘You shared a flat, Gus,’ Hook said.

‘And what’s it got to do with you?’

Gus was completing his thought, running through Hook’s statement. Hook was shifty.

‘Cam isny too sure about me. Paddy an’ me fell out a wee while back.’

Gus’s stare left Hook wanting a shield against it.

‘Anyway, Ah know you liked him, Gus. Better if Mickey finds him. If he does, he’ll have a chance to check if the boay did it, before Cam gets there.’

‘I don’t know where he is,’ Gus said.

‘You must have some kind of information,’ Mickey said. ‘Ah’m holdin’ Cam Colvin off. He doesny know about you.’

‘Then tell him.’

‘It’s no’ you that’s gonny get the napalm. It’s yer brither. That wouldny do yer mother a lot o’ good.’

Gus looked into the living-room. His father was sitting like somebody found at Pompeii. His mother was reading the paper. Seen from outside, the room looked small, some chairs and ornaments, the pathetic sum of two hard lives. And here on the balcony was what those lives had produced, a hooligan whose existence mocked their decency and a student who still hadn’t begun to repay them for what they had given.

He felt an anger that was never far away from him. He looked down at what had been the Gorbals. This was improvement? His parents lived thirteen storeys up in a building where the lift broke down if you looked at it askance. His father’s life had made him an offshoot of the bookie and the pub. His mother still offered the world an irreducible decency the world didn’t deserve. Something had to be done. In the meantime, he couldn’t bear to add one more worry to their lot.

‘Gus,’ Hook was saying.

Gus looked at Hook, then at Mickey Ballater.

‘Don’t you two come back,’ he said.

But he knew himself the aggression of the remark was no more than stylish surrender. Why should he protect Tony Veitch? Let Tony look to himself. Gus’s parents were more important. Yet he resented how his brother was teaching him to hate himself. Family shouldn’t matter that much, but here it did. He thought how his father admired Hook more because he lived by his body, whereas Gus was just a reader of books. For his father it was better to batter one aggressor into the ground than try to help all the non-aggressors like himself. It was a strange philosophy, but not uncommon where Gus lived. What did this place want?

‘Okay,’ Gus said. ‘I’ll tell you the only thing about Tony that might help you. There’s a girl called Lynsey Farren. Lady Lynsey Farren. Lord Farren’s daughter. She was with Tony. Then Paddy Collins. Then Dave McMaster.’

Ballater knew he was getting close.

‘Where do Ah find ’er?’ he asked.

‘She’s got a shop in East Kilbride. Called Overdrive.’

‘Thanks, Gus,’ Hook said.

‘For being a shite? Don’t mention it.’

Distantly, Gus watched them go into the living-room. He saw how animated his father became because Jim was inviting him down to the pub. When they had gone, he saw how contented his mother looked, as if all was well with the world. He saw how Hook was probably nearer to them than he was, though he loved them in a way he sometimes thought might destroy him. He came slowly back into the room. He lifted his book.

‘Oor Jimmy’s lookin’ well,’ his mother said.

Gus didn’t look up. He was thinking that he would soon be with Marie and he was glad.

‘Is everything all right, son?’

‘Fine, maw. Everything’s fine.’

He tried to concentrate on his reading. But it was strange how he felt on the opposite side of the book from that with which he had identified before Jim and his friend came in. He felt he was one of the people Aimé Césaire was talking about rather than to.

‘In this disarming town, this strange crowd which does not gather, does not mingle: this crowd that can so easily disengage itself, make off, slip away. .’