The Papers of Tony Veitch

8

In the bar of the Gay Laddie, John Rhodes’ favourite pub in the Calton, the beginning — and some said the end — of the East End of Glasgow, there was what felt like a crowd. There was Macey and Dave McMaster and Hook Hawkins. The rest of them were John Rhodes.

In spite of his experience, Macey never failed to be awed by John. It was nothing specific. It wasn’t his size, which was considerable. It wasn’t just the crazy lightness of his eyes, blue as a brochure sea. There was no external you could finally attach the feeling to. Perhaps it had something to do with the sense of accumulated past violence John carried, bad places been to and come back from. The effect his presence had on Macey was of conveying danger, as if his life was a matter of juggling with liquid oxygen. And always the feeling found itself relegated to recurring mirage by his easy naturalness.

Looking at John now, pouring four mugs of tea from the pot that Dave had brewed in the back, Macey was freshly aware of the combustible contradictions that were John Rhodes. Their presence here was part of them. They were meeting in the pub because John would allow no intrusion from the violent ways he made his money to disturb the home where his wife and two daughters might as well have had a bank-manager as the breadwinner.

The thought of that strangeness was echoed by the strangeness of the place. It was about half-past nine in the morning and, slanting down from the high windows that were slits of glass reinforced with mesh, the shafts of light were constellated with motes and gave the still, quiet pub an incongruous solemnity, like a chapel with a gantry. The ritual of the tea completed, the high priest spoke.

‘Hook,’ he said. ‘Tell me the truth. You know whit Cam Colvin’s on about?’

Hook Hawkins appealed to the bar. His upturned head moved as if deliberately displaying the scar that ran down his left cheek and under his chin. Some said his nickname came from that, because it had been given to him by a man with a hook for a hand. Others said the name belonged to his brief career as a boxer.

Remembering his meeting tonight with Ernie Milligan, Macey had more reason than his natural curiosity for paying careful attention. He knew that Hook and Paddy Collins had once had a fall-out but he had never heard why. He wondered if it had been about something which wasn’t really over. But he found Hook’s performance convincing.

‘Honest to God. Ah don’t know whit it’s all about, John. Ah don’t know.’

‘Paddy Collins is dead,’ John said. ‘You don’t know anythin’ about that?’

‘We were mates.’

‘Ye weren’t always mates.’

‘That trouble was all finished, John.’

‘Maybe Cam doesny think so. This Sammy’s a friend of yours, Macey?’

‘Aye. Well, an acquaintance, John. A harmless boay.’

John looked at Dave McMaster. Macey regretted his last remark. He had only meant to make it clear to John that he wouldn’t have been responsible for introducing a trouble-maker to any of the pubs John looked after. But he realised that he had made Dave’s position worse by implying he was letting innocent people get molested. He hoped Dave wouldn’t hold it against him.

‘But he’s fine,’ Macey offered as emendation. ‘No damage done. Except that the jacket looks like a tie-dye job now.’

But in certain moods John was as easily amused as an old Glasgow Empire audience on a wet Tuesday. He was still looking at Dave. Being looked at in that way, Macey thought, would be like standing too near a furnace. You would want to back off.

‘What’s Mickey Ballater doin’ up here? Who needs to re-import sewage? An’ Panda Paterson? Ah’ve done shites that could beat him.’

‘He wis no problem, John,’ Dave said. ‘But Ah didny want tae get involved wi’ Cam without your say-so. That’s serious business. That wis all.’

John was staring at him.

‘Ah hope so,’ he said. ‘Minding a place means lookin’ after everybody. Let wan wanker toss off in yer face an’ they’ll be organisin’ bus-trips. Bein’ cheeky in the Crib could get tae be a fashion.’

He sipped his tea. He wasn’t really deciding anything. He was letting it be decided for him. Deliberation wasn’t his forte. Anger was. Sitting there, he was coaxing it out of its kennel, presenting it with fragments of what had happened like giving it the scent of a quarry.

‘Open-plan pub?’ he said. ‘Oh, ah doubt that won’t do. We’ll have tae see which way he wants it. If that’s how he’s goin’ to be, we might have tae make his rib-cage open-plan. Ah’ll punch holes in ’im big enough for birds tae nest in.’

He looked at Macey.

‘Fix it up.’

‘When, John?’

‘Right now.’

‘For here?’

‘Naw. Let him choose. It doesny matter where. But be right back. Ah want tae see him right away.’

Macey left the tea that he had hardly touched and went for the door.

‘Macey. Maybe ye’d better make it near a hospital.’

John Rhodes smiled, an event as cheerful as the winter solstice.