Docherty (38 page)

She watched him helplessly as he lifted his bonnet and felt with his left hand in his pocket.

‘Here, hen,’ he said, and put two shilling pieces on the mantelpiece. ‘Get the weans something wi’ that.’

‘Naw. There’s nae need fur that, feyther.’

‘Take it. Ah’d jist drink it onywey.’

He touched her arm gently on the way out, smiling and saying, ‘Ye’re a guid lassie, Kathleen. Ah’m a wee bit kinna prood o’ ma dochter.’

She lifted the two shilling pieces from the mantelpiece as if to put them away, but instead stood clutching them like a talisman.

It was then she cried.

8

The wedding went well, it was generally agreed. At various points in the evening, the older women informed one another of the fact with some relief, like experienced nurses checking the temperature of a worrying patient. They knew the symptoms of deterioration to look for: the failure of the two sides to mix, withdrawal of the men to the bar, general paralysis round about half past nine. All crises were averted.

Conn took some of the credit. It was the first wedding he had been at since he started going to the dancing. He was old enough to participate fully and young enough to have everybody’s indulgence. He drank beer. He talked with the men. He chatted up every partner, old and young. He abducted elderly women from their groups, among raucous comments of ‘Watch that yin’ and ‘Ah’ll tell yer man.’ He suggested elopement to Mrs Daly. He elicited sixteen-year-old giggles from fifty-eight-year-old Mrs Andrews. He made a date with a girl he had never seen before, one of the other side, and wondered how he was supposed to travel fifteen miles to meet her.

It became like an unofficial coming-out party for him. He was celebrating being a man, and everybody was invited -even Angus, he realised with something like surprise when his brother came up to him at the end of a dance, holding two glasses of beer. Immediately, a lot of things he had noticed during the evening without being aware he was noticing them came together in Conn’s head. The ambiguity of his mother’s expression, as if only half of her was at the wedding and the other half was at a wake. Mick giving her much of his attention. A stranger, obviously a relative of Annie, saying, as Conn danced past, ‘Is the feyther deid then?’ Together, they forced Conn to face the aspect of the wedding from which he had been hiding in movement.

‘Here,’ Angus said. ‘Anchor yerself tae that an’ hiv a rest.’

Conn took the glass and sipped, fingering sweat from his eyebrows.

‘Ye better come through here a meenit an’ cool aff.’

They picked their way among the scatter of people beached haphazardly on their own exhaustion. Tendrils of conversation caught at them as they passed. ‘There’s that auld mairrit man.’ ‘Whit shift are ye oan the morra, Gus?’ Angus led the way into the small room at the end of the hall. It wasn’t lit but with the door open it turned down the volume of light in the dance-hall to a pleasant gentleness. Coats and jackets hung round the walls. A table and some stacked chairs were the only furniture. Conn sat on the table, drinking. Seen from the outside, the hall became a fact.

‘Hey,’ Conn said. ‘Ye’re mairrit. Whit does it feel like?’

‘Ah’ll tell ye the morra.’

Conn watched another young man ask the girl he had dated to dance. He couldn’t remember her name.

‘Yer wee hoose is a’ right, onywey,’ he said. ‘Ye’re a’ right there.’

‘That’s no’ a’,’ Angus said. ‘Look at this.’

He reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a bundle of notes, spreading them with his thumb, like a deck of cards. It was more money than Conn had ever seen. There must have been about twenty pounds, he thought.

‘Where did ye get that?’

‘Ah’m a workin’ man.’

‘Jesus. Ye must be mair than wan workin’ man tae have that kinna money.’

The joke was automatic, grew out of the words, but having said it, Conn found that he had stumbled reluctantly on to a possibility. Angus’s smile wasn’t reassuring.

‘Does a’ yer squad make that kinna money?’

‘They a’ make whit they earn,’ Angus said. ‘An’ there’s plenty mair yet. Listen. If ye ever fancy makin’ some real money, jist let me ken. A special openin’ fur ye. Only brithers need apply.’

They looked across and each surprised the same thought in the other. Neither knew which of them it came from first, but the money took on the significance of a bribe, and Angus put it back in his pocket. Conn looked away. He saw Kathleen and Jack dancing the two-step. They looked happy.

‘Whit dae ye make o’ him then?’ Angus said.

‘Who?’

‘Come oan. The place is hauf empty withoot ‘im.’

Conn drank to avoid talking.

‘It’s no’ believable, is it? Why did he no’ come? Ah kept thinkin’ he was bound tae show up. Whit dae ye think o’ that?’

‘Ye ken hoo he is.’

‘Aye. Tadger came,’ Angus said, watching him pilot the stately bulk of Mrs Daly round the floor. Angus suddenly laughed. ‘Luk at ‘im. He’s like a bit that fell aff her. But ma feyther couldny come.’

‘Don’t let it worry ye, Angus.’

‘Who’s worried?’ Angus said. ‘RIP.’

Conn looked at him and saw that he meant it. It was then that Conn realised how short he himself still was of being a man. What he had been doing during the evening was just a boy’s game. Being a man didn’t mean drinking beer and sharing jokes and pattering girls. It meant being where Angus was. He sat beside Conn now on the table, taking a sip of beer, his eyes quietly reflecting on what was happening in the hall. His carefully laundered white shirt had wilted in the heat, fusing on to his skin, so that it was like a peeling disguise for the hardness of his body. Conn saw his preoccupation as more than temporary. It seemed to Conn he had always had that quality about him of moving along private corridors, an area whose counterpart Conn felt he hadn’t yet discovered in himself. You could always shout but chances were he wouldn’t hear you, whereas Conn heard every incidental noise and was distracted by it. Where Angus found the decision to quietly bury a living father baffled Conn and frightened him.

‘He wid dae the same fur me,’ Angus said. ‘An’ Ah’m gled. Ah’m daein’ whit Ah hiv tae dae. Let him dae the same. Poor bugger. Maybe he’s richt to haud it against me the wey he does. Ah used tae wonder whit the fuss wis aboot. Because Ah punched a few faces. An’ lifted up a few skirts. An’ made some extra bob. But he kent there wis mair tae it than that. Ah’ll gi’e him that. He kent whit it wis daein’ before Ah did. Ye ken whit bothered ma feyther? Ah wisny punchin’ the right faces. Ah didny lift up skirts with proper respect. See, ye ken whit Ah’ve come tae think? Ma feyther still believes in some kinna holiness. At least he’s tryin’ tae. He’s no’ a Catholic, all richt. An’ Christ knows whit he believes. But he believes it strong. An’ whit Ah did wis Ah shat in his wee church. An’ he’s havin’ tae live wi’ the smell. Good luck tae ‘im. Because Ah agree wi’ him on wan thing. Ah’m no’ playin’ fur his team. An’ whit he kens is his team’s gonny lose. An’ Ah’m gonny win. Ah’ve done no’ bad already. Ah’m still comin’ oan. Ah ken who’s side Ah’m on. Whit aboot you?’

Conn didn’t answer. Angus had been speaking compulsively but not because he needed reassurance, rather because he was so sure of himself that he needed to tell somebody else. He was like a pretender so certain of his own assumption of power that he checks his support not to see if he’ll succeed but just to know who his friends are when he does. Having come back from some kind of exile of his own, he had learned that he could do without anybody except himself. Looking at him sitting easily there, Conn felt him dangerous, just because you didn’t know which way he might move. Whatever he did would be according to his own promptings and not foreseeable. You couldn’t make too many assumptions about Angus.

Conn remembered something that had happened when they were both boys. One of the houses on Wullie Mair’s brae attracted a group of them once when they were going up the country, because the door of the back-garden had a sign saying ‘Beware of the Dog’. They had knocked at the door of the house. Having made sure nobody was in, they climbed on to the wall of the garden and there it was, an Alsatian attached to its kennel by a chain. Two or three of them ventured into the garden and left again quickly. Angus stayed. Determining the length of the chain, he moved in and out of range, teasing and testing, for so long that the others got tired of watching and left, including Conn. When he rejoined them up the road, the sleeve of his jersey was torn but he seemed satisfied. Conn thought that in a way he hadn’t changed. He was still looking for his limits.

Angus brought out a packet of cigarettes and they lit up. Smoking so soon after his exertion made Conn cough.

‘Look at them,’ Angus said.

In the hall they were doing the Gay Gordons. They were all ages, advancing and receding, polkaing past in frantic procession; middle-aged women moving their bosoms around like ponderous pieces of furniture; Tadger sweating harder than he did on a shift; somebody’s children who hadn’t yet fallen asleep hammily mocking the dance since they couldn’t do it; an old couple making a minuet of it; a young boy and girl trying to copy the steps of those nearest them. The fiddlers sounded as if they were going mad. Most of the dancers’ eyes had a look of glazed acquiescence.

‘Ah mean Ah like them,’ Angus went on. ‘Hoo could ye no’? They’re great, aren’t they? But Christ. That’s whit they’ve been daein’ a’ their lives. Dancin’ tae whitever tune gets played. Whit’s ma feyther waitin’ fur? They’re no’ gonny chinge. They’re a’ too guid losers. That’s whit they’re best at. They’ve hud that much practice. Well, no’ me. Ye ken a funny thing? There’s no’ wan body in that hall, or ootside it that Ah ken o’, that Ah don’t think Ah could cope wi’. Ah don’t ken anything that’ll stoap me fae daein’ whit Ah’m gonny dae. Frem noo on, it’s just Annie an’ me. An’ we’re gonny make oot.’

‘That’s mair than a wee bit wild,’ Conn said.

‘Who’s arguin’?’

Angus looked at him and smiled.

‘Hard times, Conn,’ he said. ‘Harder times aheid. You stey among them, ye micht jist get buried in the boadies.’

As the dance came to an end in the hall the small, half-darkened room he and Angus were in seemed to Conn like a threat the others were unaware of. He felt as if Angus had involved him in a conspiracy from which people like Tadger, mopping his face with a handkerchief and laughing, were excluded. They all looked somehow terribly vulnerable, the three young men pretending to hold one another up, the girl repinning a fallen strand of hair, Mrs Daly easing herself into a seat beside his mother and having a flushing, Mick reaching under his chair for his glass of beer. He thought of a phrase his mother used a lot: God save us. Who else? He sensed himself a part of their openness. For beside Angus, Conn seemed to himself to be vague and ineffectual, wanting to go in five different ways at once.

They announced the ‘Drops O’ Brandy.’ A voice at the door of the small room said, There, he’s there!’ Buzz Crawley appeared in the doorway, pulling a partner. Rab Lawson and his girl-friend were there too.

‘Come oan, come oan,’ Buzz Crawley said. ‘This is some time tae be gettin’ fou. Whit are ye? Feart? Annie’s oot here waitin’ fur ye.’

‘We’re gonna hiv the best set in the hall,’ Rab said.

Angus laughed, finished his beer, punched Conn’s shoulder, and went out. As Conn followed them, he noticed that the girl whose hand Buzz was holding was the one he had dated. She gave him a look that said ‘What could I do?’ Conn winked and leaned against the doorway while Buzz and Rab pretended to be pulling Angus across the dancefloor. Buzz was singing, ‘Here comes the groom.’ Rab shouted, ‘We found ‘im, Annie. He wis hidin’.’

Conn stayed where he was when others signalled him to join their set. He raised his almost empty glass of beer as an excuse. The real reason was that, after talking to Angus, he felt as if he’d only just arrived at the wedding. When the music started up, he watched them dance. Angus and Annie were leading off in their set. People in the other sets were looking across at them, smiling and clapping in time to the music. Angus spun Annie in his own vortex, volleying laughter all around him. The quickening tempo drew Conn’s mood after it. The music, the stamping feet, the whirling bodies, the clapping hands, the set, smiling faces of the ones sitting around oppressed him. He thought confusedly that what was happening wasn’t what seemed to be happening.

9

‘Where is he the nicht then, mither?’

Conn slung his jacket over a chair, an echo of his father.

‘Och, he jist went oot fur a daun’er, son,’ his mother said, very casual, unconcerned.

‘A mystery tour tae the nearest pub,’ Mick added.

Conn sat down in his father’s chair and lit a cigarette with a piece of paper at the fire. It was no use offering Mick a cigarette. He had given up smoking – one of those exercises he liked to subject his will-power to. What was he training for?

Conn looked at his mother. She was darning socks. She was darning bloody socks. It injured his eyes just to look at her. If it wasn’t socks, it was washing. If it wasn’t washing it was moleskins. If it wasn’t moleskins it was making food. When she died, she shouldn’t have a headstone. She should have a pyramid of washing two miles high. Let the bastards know what her life was like. And where was he? Out swallowing glasses of painkiller. He would come in numb.

‘Where’ve ye been yersel’, son?’

‘Knockin’ aboot. We saw the Charlie Chaplin. It wis great.’

‘He’s a funny wee man.’

‘Aye.’

Mick hadn’t once looked up from his book.

‘Pit the soacks doon an’ hiv a blether, mither,’ Conn said.

‘Ah can talk fine the wey Ah am, son. It’s goat tae be done.’

Christ, lay them down. He could hardly remember her without something in her hands. Perhaps she was frightened to look at the world except round the edge of a chore.

‘Whit’s the book, then?’

‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.’

The whit?’

Mick said nothing.

‘Whit’s it aboot?’

‘Us.’

Conn wasn’t in the mood for trying to crack the code Mick liked to talk in these days. He felt annoyed at his mother and Mick. His coming-in hadn’t shifted them out of their positions for a second, as if they knew exactly who he was. Yesterday evening, he’d been with a girl who thought he was marvellous. Tonight, after the pictures, he’d had an argument with Mickey Ray that was coming to fists until Mickey had reneged. He felt important. It was a good feeling, as if wherever he threw his cap was where it would lie, and nobody dare shift it. He felt pity for his mother patching her life together day by day, Mick hiding in his books. Generously, he wanted to talk to them.