The Papers of Tony Veitch

20

There was a girl wearing white trousers, tight enough at the buttocks to let you count the pores. She gave the impression she was practising how to atomise. Every part of her body seemed to be making strenuous efforts to separate from every other part. Her eyes were closed. She had a partner somewhere. The music had given up following her.

She wasn’t particularly noticeable, except to one of the only two older men standing at the bar. They were probably no more than late thirties but the context and their mood made them feel like two face-lifts that fell. Poppies Disco wasn’t a haunt of theirs.

‘See that yin wi’ the white breeks on, Pat?’ one of them said.

‘Ah’ve got somethin’ in ma eye,’ Pat said.

‘Probably her left tit. She’s throwin’ them about all over the place.’

Pat was conducting a delicate operation on his left eye. He teased his upper eyelashes carefully towards his eyebrow and rolled the lower rim of his eye up and down. He blinked a few times and seemed satisfied.

‘Ah feel like Methuselah’s daddy, Tam,’ he said. ‘This wis your idea, ya bam.’

‘Gets us the late drink, doesn’t it?’

‘Right enough. But they’re all that young.’

‘If they’re old enough to bleed, they’re old enough to butcher.’

‘Be your age. Where’d ye read that? The Gestapo Gazette? Ah’d be embarrassed tryin’ with wan o’ these. In case Ah couldny undo her nappy. When’s the go-go dancer on again?’

‘Ah thought ye wereny interested,’ Tam said.

‘That’s different, intit? The lassie’s just doin’ a job. Ye can kid yerself on an’ go hame. Her an’ you can both get a good night’s sleep. No problem.’

Tam looked round the place. He liked the decor. The seats round the edges were designed as dice, the wall-lights as poker hands. The small stage the go-go dancer would come back to was a roulette-wheel. It appealed to his love of risk.

‘Fella that used to own this,’ he said. ‘He cut his throat.’

‘He musta felt like me. Know somethin’, Tam? There’s nothin’ can age ye more than seein’ all the cuff ye’ll never get near. Ah’m greetin’. Ah’m greetin’.’

‘Naw. He wis a poof,’ Tam said, as if that explained the inevitability of suicide. ‘Ye gonny dance?’

‘Ah thought ye wid never ask me.’

‘Naw. Ye gonny?’

‘The first Canadian Barn Dance they play, Ah’m up like a shot.’

‘You know whit it is wi’ you?’ Tam said. ‘You feel out your depth. Ye see, Ah don’t. Ah can see people here Ah recognise. Can you?’

‘Tam. Ah’m no’ sure Ah recognise me.’

‘Look over there.’

Tam swivelled Pat’s shoulders towards a corner of the room. Pat focussed on a couple. To him they were a woman with a man vaguely attached. Neither was speaking. She was a big, blonde woman that he wouldn’t have had the cheek to claim seriously. He felt he wouldn’t know what to say in the morning. She was somewhere he wouldn’t have minded taking his holidays but he knew that she wasn’t a place for him to live. Then he noticed the man. He looked as if they might have made him in Dixon’s Blazes, a piece of heavy engineering, Pat thought. He looked as if he could arm-wrestle a crane.

‘Uh-huh,’ Pat said. ‘Ye gonny show me somethin’ else?’

‘That’s Dave McMaster,’ Tam said. ‘Ye’ve heard of Dave McMaster?’

‘Aye,’ Pat said. ‘Ah just wish that big burd wisny wi’ him. Look at her!’

She was staring ahead. Lynsey Farren wasn’t liking having her enjoyment of this place compromised by Dave. It expressed so much of what she felt about him that she resented his willingness to let in outside air. He was bringing in cold draughts from the streets outside.

‘We have to sort this out,’ he was saying. ‘One way or the other. We have to.’

She looked around. The energy took her breath away. She saw these young people dancing, bodies throwing themselves about, so careless, like casual conversation. They were a message that fascinated her because she could never quite understand it or imitate its tones, that unselfconscious declaration of self before departing into the dark. She imagined what boring jobs they must go back to, if they had jobs, that girl with a face tallow in the strobe lights, that boy who looked like a seedy angel and sneered at himself.

They explained her flat to her. She had rejected her own taste and just bought kitsch because she felt that where she lived no longer mattered much, should be as anonymous as a railway station. Tony had taught her that. He had said, ‘Houses are ways of hiding from a more complicated reality, I think. They should have porous walls. The less they’re you, the nearer they are to communal places. Like the best working-class houses.’ These dancers reminded her of that, were all open doors.

She looked at Dave. He was drumming on the table, absorbed in his worries. She understood why she had finished up with him. Tony was the idea, Paddy Collins was the imitation of the idea, Dave was the fact. He couldn’t walk into a room without his eyes asking what was the game here and his body saying he could play it. His vigour was a train you thought you’d better catch if you wanted to go somewhere. She had caught it. Though she didn’t know exactly where it was going, she believed it was better than where she had been.

‘So what do we do?’ she asked.

‘We try to help Tony. But Ah’ve got tae phone this Mickey Ballater the night. Ah give him a nonsense, right? Ah mean, Ah’ll tell him where tae find auld Danny McLeod. That keeps ’im busy a wee while. But he’s gonny phone back. An’ he’ll not be a pleased man. So then we have tae move intae the real game. Ah have to start doin’ real tricks. Ah need your help. You’ve got to find out where Tony Veitch is. It’s as simple as that.’

‘I’m sure Alma knows.’

‘Then you go and see Alma. The morra mornin’. Fair enough?’

‘I suppose I could. Milton will be at the golf. He always plays golf on Sunday morning. Sometimes has lunch at the club and plays again in the afternoon. I’m sure I can get her alone. Are you going to give Mickey Ballater my number?’

‘Ah’ll have to. Ah’m goin’ to let him phone me back. Ah give him that, he’ll give me back some trust. It’ll steal a few hours. We’re gonny need them. See. You want to help Tony, what we’ve got to do here is play for time. Ah can get the right people to find him. An’ still kid Ballater on. Ye understand?’

She wasn’t sure that she did but she didn’t know anything else to do but let Dave handle it.

‘You going to phone?’ she asked.

‘Ah’ll phone right now. Ah said before the day’s out. The day’s not out.’

He got up and walked across a red carpet that nobody else could see. But she believed it was there. And certainly nobody encroached on his progress.

Reaching the phone, he dialled the number he had dialled earlier today. The same woman’s voice answered, saying the same thing, ‘Gina?’ Did she not know who she was? He didn’t bother confirming. He asked for Mickey Ballater. The voice that was as gravelly as a cement-mixer came on at once. ‘Aye?’ He must be in bed with her, Dave thought. She must be kinky for no-users. He gave his message and waited.

‘Who’s he?’

‘He wis a friend of Eck Adamson’s. He must know somethin’ about Tony. Ah told ye about Eck, right? Ah’m tryin’ all Ah know. You have a word wi’ him. No joy, you phone this number.’ He gave him Lynsey’s number. ‘That all right?’

‘It better be. Ah’ll tell ye how all right it is the morra.’

Ballater put the phone down. Dave gave the dead tone the fingers. Go and frighten Birmingham, he thought. He walked back into the dance-area, hoping somebody would try to intercept him. But he had a clear path to Lynsey. She looked up. He nodded and sat down.

‘There’s a man at the bar,’ she said, ‘trying to have a fight.’

He looked across. He saw a man who wasn’t as drunk as he was trying to be. He was gesticulating in that ambiguous way that was both a threat and a plea. ‘I’m warning you but don’t take me too seriously.’ Dave didn’t. He sipped at his vodka and orange.

Tam stopped gesturing at one of the men behind the bar and subsided into his whisky. Surrounded by imagined enemies, he was muttering to himself. ‘Ah could sort this whole place out.’ He looked over his shoulder and saw Pat sitting suave at a table. The girl he was with was almost all eyes. He wondered what they could be talking about that was so interesting.

‘After that,’ Pat was saying, ‘I played at inside left.’