The Papers of Tony Veitch

31

Gus Hawkins was alone in his flat. He admitted Laidlaw to an atmosphere he remembered from his own brief time as a student. There was an old armchair near the window, with several books lying round it and on the arm an open paperback of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life with heavy underlinings in biro. There was a can of export on the floor beside the chair. Sunlight shone on the open pages of the book, seeming to hackle that delicate fur the surface of cheap paper has.

It was a still life of studenthood, evocative of long hours spent alone, intense head-wrestling matches with the dead, endless arguments on which the world depended, cups of coffee at strange hours, time contracted to a pellet and dissolved to disappearance. Laidlaw remembered his own discovery that his mind was there and knew the poignancy of possibilities felt in this kind of book-lined womb before career or circumstances yank you out. The awareness made his impulsiveness pause, but only briefly.

‘You don’t have a job in the summer?’ Laidlaw asked.

‘I’ve managed to get part-time in a pub. You want a can of beer?’

Laidlaw did. Gus fetched him a can. Sitting back down to sip his own beer, Gus waited. His eyes had lost their abstractedness of when he answered the door. His recovery from that state made it occur to him to explain it.

‘I didn’t know who you were at first there. If something happens when I’m working, takes me a week to focus. I’m only even money to remember my name.’

‘I know what you mean.’

Laidlaw pulled the tag on his can and it made a small geyser of escaping gas.

‘I didn’t know the polis drank on duty.’

That inflection of aggressiveness in his voice towards the police, something Laidlaw sometimes felt must be taught in the West of Scotland along with ‘choo-choo’, disturbed the idle pleasure of the moment. Laidlaw’s mind put on its working clothes. He took a drink.

‘Who’s on duty?’ Laidlaw said. ‘This is a discourtesy call. You’ve heard about Tony Veitch?’

Gus nodded.

‘We found his papers, by the way. Burnt to ash in a lavatory pan. Those papers interest me. He writes to his father, Lynsey Farren, you. But none of you keeps the letter. He writes reams of other stuff. It’s all destroyed. Why is that? It’s almost as if he was trying to say what nobody wanted to hear. What was it, I wonder?’

‘A lot of things, I suppose.’

‘You’ve read some of them, have you?’

‘Some.’

‘I mean, what were they about?’

‘Just trying to understand things, I think. Anyway, surely Tony destroyed them himself.’

‘You think so?’

‘What else could it be?’

Laidlaw took a drink and seemed nonplussed.

‘Anyway, he’s dead,’ Laidlaw said. ‘How does that strike you?’

‘As a fact.’

‘That’s all?’

‘That’s not enough? I mean, I can think of a couple of other people I wouldn’t mind volunteering to take his place. But they probably wouldn’t agree. So there we are.’

‘I thought you liked him.’

‘I did. But now he’s dead.’

‘God preserve me from you as a friend.’

‘Your wish is granted.’

Laidlaw looked at him — so sure, so young. Laidlaw himself seemed to know less every day. If it kept on this way, he would die in the foetal position with his thumb in his mouth, but probably still looking apprehensively around him, his wonderment as strong as it was now.

‘How do you do that?’ he said. ‘Be so unconcerned. So bloody unsad.’

‘There are bigger sadnesses about.’

‘Like what? You mean the Third World and capitalist oppression and that?’

‘Something like that.’

‘But pity for one precludes pity for the other, does it? What if I tell you I reckon Tony was murdered?’

Gus Hawkins looked at the open pages of Freud as if consulting his notes, glanced at the window, stared back at Laidlaw. A lot was happening behind his eyes but none of it was for release.

‘You think that?’ he asked.

‘I feel sure he was. If he was, can you think of any contenders?’

Gus shook his head immediately.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Laidlaw said. He was holding his beercan so tightly it buckled a bit and sent a small splash of beer on to the frayed carpet. He wiped it with a handkerchief as he went on. ‘You’re a cracker. Brain of Britain. You answer a question like that off the top of your head. It’s like talking to a computer. Or a balloon. And I think you’re a balloon.’

Gus’s shoulders went rigid under the sweater.

‘If you’ve finished your beer, I think you’d better go. In fact, whether you’ve finished or not. Don’t sit and drink my beer and insult me.’

Laidlaw smiled at him slowly.

‘It didn’t take long for the cosmic objectivity to turn personal,’ he said. ‘A wee bit of the embourgeoisement there, Gus, eh? Fair enough. I’ve had enough spunk in my eye for one day, anyway.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean you’re a wanker. I noticed it quick. You offer a man a drink and then, before he can get it to his mouth, you dig him up about drinking on duty. What’s that about?’ Knowing he had put himself on his way out, Laidlaw saw no point in going quietly. ‘But a lot more than that. Tony’s supposed to have destroyed his papers. That doesn’t give you a tremor. Do you think that’s likely? Did you know him? I never met him and I know that’s hardly on the cards for him to do. You better lay into old Sigmund there. You’re not exactly a great reader of the human heart. I doubt Tony wasn’t either. He could’ve got better friends in a lucky bag. Look at the people near him. You and Lynsey Farren. And his father. But at least those other two practise an honest selfishness. You’ve got to dress it up in a lot of sanctimonious theories. Why not admit it? You just don’t give a shit. I’ve seen more compassion in a fucking wolverine. How do you manage to make love to your girlfriend, Gus? You put it together like an identikit from what you read in books? Do you? Because there can’t be anything in the middle of you but theory.’

Gus looked at him steadily. The word he said was a small one but it seemed to grow as slowly as a glacier and, spoken, it filled the room with chill.

‘Cheerio.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about it. I fancy doing something jollier. Like kissing lepers. Most of that beer’s still there, by the way. You could maybe send it to the Third World.’

Laidlaw stood up. The rage he felt frightened him. His hatred for the prevarications people practised was hardly containable. He knew the sensible way to live was to leave this alone. But he couldn’t leave it alone. He believed three people had been murdered. And nobody seriously cared who did it. It wouldn’t do.

‘Your kind of intellectual sickens me,’ he said, and had no idea what else to say.

He stood looking at the wall. Like a stag at bay, he was who he was, he was what he was, and nothing else. He saw no hope of proving what he suspected. He had half a vision and nobody else would begin to admit the possibility of the other half. He knew they were lying. It was all he knew. For the moment, it was all he cared about.

‘I know you,’ he said. ‘Where you are. You’re protecting your brother. And your friend can go die as he likes. It’s not your business. But it is. It’s everybody’s business. There’s no other business we have. How each of us dies matters. Eck Adamson is dead. I’ll bury him proper. You better believe it. You’ll help me or you won’t. But I’ll bury him proper. I mean, in my mind. He’ll have a proper funeral in meaning. Or I’ll cause so much trouble even I won’t believe it. I don’t want your brother, Gus Hawkins. Unless he did it, I don’t want him. But I’ll understand what happened. Yes, I will. You better believe it.’

Laidlaw himself couldn’t see how until Gus Hawkins rose and put on a parka. He looked round the room, then at Laidlaw. It was a strange moment. Laidlaw felt that at last someone had heard not just the words of his anger but the pain behind them and was admitting that he shared it. They were in contact with each other.

‘You got a car?’ Gus said.

Laidlaw nodded.

‘I’ll take you one place. That’s all I’ll do. It’s up to you.’

In the car Gus explained her name was Gina. She was Italian. Tony Veitch had been with her. Gus didn’t know her surname but he knew the tenement she lived in. When he got out of the car and said he would walk back home, they smiled at each other like a shared secret.

‘I hope you get it right,’ Gus said.

‘For both our sakes,’ Laidlaw said. ‘Eh?’

Gus nodded.