Strange Loyalties (20 page)

‘You two must have a lot to talk about.'

Frankie was wondering what it was. He stirred his tea very slowly.

‘What is this?' he said. ‘Ah'm clean, Mr Laidlaw.'

‘Call me Jack. We've got to keep up appearances.'

‘Ah'm clean. Ah came up from London tae see ma mother
out. Ah'm not involved up here any more. Ah don't need this.'

‘Frankie. I'm not here on official business.'

‘Mr Laidlaw –'

‘Jack.'

‘Jack.' He didn't use the name with complete conviction. ‘What polisman was ever anywhere that wasn't on official business? You mob don't have friends. You have informants. Who are ye kiddin'? You're lookin' for information. Ah don't give information. You know that.'

I did. Frankie White had never shopped anyone. It was what made him accepted among men a lot harder and more successful than himself.

‘All right, Frankie. But this is personal information. It's not for use in the courts. It's just for me. Why did you fall out with my brother?'

‘What brother?'

‘Scott.'

‘Who the hell's Scott? Ah don't know your brother.'

The troubled amazement in his eyes was not for denying. He was having a bad day and he didn't know where it came from. I told him Gus McPhater's version of the incident in the Akimbo Arms.

‘Ah remember somethin' like that,' he said. ‘Was that your brother? Jesus, he was wild. Runs in the family, eh? But Ah never understood what it was supposed tae be aboot. Ye no' ask him?'

‘He's dead.'

I thought I saw an infinitesimal relaxation on Frankie's face.

‘What happened?'

I told him.

‘Ah'm sorry. That's hellish. Ah'm sorry. Jack. But Ah never knew what that was about. Ah think the fella was just drunk. Picked on me. Maybe he didny like the suit Ah was wearin'. He wouldny be the first.'

The way he used my first name confirmed my suspicions. False intimacy is treachery's favourite weapon. Judas kisses. The best way to knife a man is to embrace him as you do it. I decided I didn't believe him. He knew what I needed to know and he was lying. I felt my anger freeze me to the chair. I stared at Frankie. Drinking his tea seemed to demand as much concentration as threading a needle.

‘Frankie,' I said. ‘Tell me why Scott quarrelled with you.'

‘Ah wish Ah knew.'

‘Frankie. Ah need to know.'

‘What can Ah say?'

‘The fuckin' truth.'

‘Come on. Ah can't tell ye what Ah don't know.'

We will take our little deceits to the edge of the grave. We will trivialise even death. Frankie White was staring the ultimate truth in the face and still he couldn't kick the habit of a lifetime: lie to the police. My compassion for what was happening in his life atrophied.

‘Frankie,' I said. ‘You're a petty crook. And you're not very good at it. You're a fantasist and a liar and a phoney. But you've got two things going for you. Just two. I suppose they're what hold you together. You've never touted to the polis. And if that woman Sarah's anything to go by, there are maybe a couple of people who believe in you as a good man. Like your mother. Your mother must think you're something special. What I'm
going to do. If you don't tell me what you know. I'm going to make your name a bad smell everywhere. Not just in Glasgow. I know where you're living now.' I told him his address in Kentish Town. ‘But before that. I'm going to go upstairs and tell your mother things that'll destroy her faith in you.'

We both sat still in the room for a couple of minutes, despising me. I thought of Pete Wells and knew I wouldn't have liked to look in his eyes just now. I had threatened to make an innocent old woman's dying miserable in order to get at her son.

‘Frankie,' I said. ‘I apologise. Of course, I won't say anything to your mother. It would be like pissing on my own mother's grave. I'm sorry. Forget it. Forget I asked.'

Frankie finished his tea.

‘You know,' he said. ‘The last week or so. Ah've had to look at maself in a different mirror. It's not nice. All that woman's done for me. An' what did Ah give her back? An' she still believes in me. It's probably all she's got to believe in. If she stops believin' in that, she'll know that all those years were wasted. In one way, Ah'm glad for her that she hasn't been out the door for the past few months. She hasn't heard what the village thinks o' me these days. May she never. That's what your brother was talkin' about. Ah honestly didn't know that's who he was. He was a stranger to me. But he knew me all right. And he knew what had happened.'

He lifted his cigarettes from beside the fire and offered me one. We lit up. I waited. He was talking to himself as much as to me. A question would have been an intrusion.

‘Ah've been thinkin' all this week,' he said. ‘Ah wish Ah wis
more of a man. Not just for me. But for her. Ah mean, there she is. She hasny cheated the world outa tuppence change in the whole of her life. She could teach God fairness. She came through the sorest times an' made them intae a bed for me. An' whit does she get oot them? A fuckin' toe-rag for a son. An' Ah've been thinkin'. Ah want to give her somethin' to hold in her hand before she goes. Somethin' good. Some belief in me. Just so that she can shut her eyes on a good feelin'. It's the least she deserves. An' Ah've been wonderin' how Ah do that.'

He looked across at me.

‘You're a respectable man,' he said.

‘I think you could be confusing me with somebody else, Frankie.'

‘Come on. Jack. Jack Laidlaw. If you're not, ye certainly look the part.'

I couldn't see where he was taking me.

‘Jack. Ah'm even callin' ye Jack. Just like old friends. How about takin' that a stage further? Ah'll make a deal. Ah'll tell ye what ye want to know. An' you do one thing for me. You walk up that stair an' talk to ma mother an' be ma friend. Not many people round here come about this house these days. Sarah is it. For the rest, it might as well be a leper colony. At least while Ah'm in the house. But if you went up there. An' ye sat a wee while. An' ye told her what a good man Ah am an' how much ye believe in me. That would be something, eh? See what Ah mean? Could be like morphine for 'er. She'll float out in a dream. That's all Ah'm askin'. Help me to give her somethin' nice she can cuddle to herself till she gets tae sleep.'

He was finding it difficult to go on. But he did.

‘You see, you don't know her. But she's worth it. This is a wumman that . . .'

‘Frankie,' I said. ‘Don't waste your breath.'

He looked saddened and hurt.

‘For that generation of working-class women,' I said, ‘I'd burn down buildings. I know how much they gave and the shit they got back. You don't have to convert a disciple. Just tell me what to say an' Ah'm yer man.'

He smiled at me and I smiled back and we were a momentary brotherhood – two reprobates who nevertheless understood the shared goodness they had come from.

‘Ah'll leave the details up to you,' he said. ‘Ah canny think of one thing in ma favour at the moment. Ye'll see why when Ah tell ye. Your brother knew something that had happened here in Thornbank three month ago. He knew Ah was involved in it. Don't ask me how he knew. Ah think he thought Ah was more involved in it than Ah was. But Ah was involved all right. An' he hated me for it. Ah couldny believe how much he hated me that night.'

I remembered Gus McPhater's awe at Scott's anger. That small, vicious altercation was about to clarify into meaning, like an insect noise that is finally identified.

‘Dan Scoular's dead,' Frankie said. He paused as if he was still not fully used to the idea. ‘The big man's dead. You know who he was? He was as good as ye get. Your brother knew he was dead. An' he blamed me for it.'

The name of Dan Scoular whispered a memory at me that I couldn't quite catch. Scott had mentioned him to me more than once. Something about how formidable he had been.

‘A bit of a puncher?' I said. ‘An ex-miner?'

‘That's your man. You knew him?'

I shook my head.

‘Well, what happened was. He was unemployed. An' Ah got him into a bare-knuckle fight. Wi' Cutty Dawson.' I was familiar with the name of the ex-heavyweight boxer. ‘Dan won. But they thought Cutty might be blinded. An' as a loser he got no money. Big Dan wouldn't have that. So he's taking on the promoters next.'

‘Who set up the fight?'

‘Matt Mason and Cam Colvin. Dan was Matt's man. Cutty was Cam's.'

‘So what happened?'

‘Dan visits Cutty in hospital after the fight, finds out the score. He goes back to Matt Mason's, knocks him out and takes what he decides should be Cutty's wages. He delivers them to him. Can ye imagine it? He robbed Matt Mason.'

Frankie was right to find it an amazing story. The headline could have been: Gunfighter challenges the Eighth Army.

‘Then Dan came back here. Hide in plain sight, right enough. Ah knew Ah was in the line of fire. Ah had it away to London. But Ah tried to take Big Dan with me. Ah warned him what he was mixed up in. You try to pick Matt's pocket, ye're goin' to leave yer hand in there. But Ah felt responsible. Not for what Dan did. Who could have imagined anybody would be as simple as that? But for setting him up for the fight in the first place. Ah made him the offer to come with me. Why didn't he take it?'

He seemed genuinely puzzled. I recognised the old Frankie White. Confronting a potentially transforming experience, he hadn't really changed. I sometimes wonder if we ever do.
Because his was a portable self, a suitcase on which the labels will vary according solely to personal need, he couldn't understand that a man might be fixed to a place by factors beyond self-interest.

‘Thing is, Ah hear Cutty's sight's all right again. He didn't go blind.'

He appeared to be saying that Dan Scoular's stand had been pointless after all. I thought Frankie perhaps had his own problems of vision. He couldn't see that the big man was presumably protesting against the nature of things beyond the pragmatic.

‘How did Dan Scoular die?'

‘A hit-and-run driver. Dan kept up the joggin'. We used to do that for his trainin'. He went out one mornin' an' never came back. Seems he was found on the road. Ah mean, when ye think of it. They never found who did it.' Frankie looked at me like a small boy who wants to show his butterfly but is afraid you might crush it. ‘Ah mean. It really could've been an accident. Couldn't it?'

‘Sure, Frankie,' I said. ‘And John F. Kennedy shot himself.'

‘Aye,' Frankie said.

We sat in our own thoughts. I was glad mine weren't Frankie's.

‘He was married?'

‘Aye. Betty. Two boys.'

‘They still live here?'

‘Three streets away.'

‘Where exactly?'

Frankie was staring at me.

‘You're no' goin' there?'

‘That was the idea.'

‘Come on. What's the point of that?'

‘Frankie. There's things I need to know. I still don't know what Scott had to do with all this. Do you?'

‘Not a clue.'

‘Maybe Betty Scoular has.'

‘Rather you than me,' Frankie said. ‘Betty never liked me anyway. She's a smashin' big wumman, right enough. But Ah'll admire her from a distance. Especially now. Ah just hope she doesny know Ah'm here. Though Ah suppose she's bound to. If thoughts could kill, they'd be buryin' me soon, not ma mother.'

I asked him where she lived and he told me how to get there.

‘You've kept your bit of the bargain,' I said. ‘You want me to speak to your mother?'

‘You don't mind?'

‘Why should I mind?'

‘Well, Ah suppose Ah'm askin' ye to lie.'

‘I've only two rules about lying, Frankie,' I said. ‘Never tell them to yourself, if you can help it. Never tell them to anybody else unless they're benign. I've known lies that were gifts. A dying woman who wants to believe she looks the way she looked when she was eighteen. You going to tell her she's wrong? Of course, you're not. You're going to ask her for a date, aren't you? Anyway, who said you're the worst. I can talk nice about you without choking, don't worry, Francis.'

We went upstairs. There were two lamps with floral shades lit in Mrs White's room. She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, while Sarah Haggerty talked to her from a cushioned
wicker-work chair. Frankie introduced me as an old friend who had dropped in. Sarah said she would have to be getting round to her own house to check on things but would come back later. She said cheerio to me. Frankie went downstairs with her, perhaps to see her out, perhaps to let my creative version of him flourish without the inhibiting presence of reality. I sat down in the chair from which Sarah had risen. I smiled at Mrs White.

She had a face like a handful of bones and those pilgrim eyes of the dying. Most of the essential luggage of her life had gone on ahead and here she was waiting at a wayside station among strangers who had other business. The living are all strangers to the dying. It's just that they're too polite to tell us so. They are kind to our crass familiarities that mistake them for someone else. They do not tell us that we are the bores who have crashed a party for one, seeking company for our own terrified loneliness we have suddenly recognised in their eyes. The dying arrive at true politeness. Even if they scream, they only scream in so far as it is necessary. For who else can establish the rules for what is theirs alone? They cannot be unkind to us, for they leave us alive when they are not. She was kind to me.

‘Hullo. Mrs White?'

‘Hullo, son.'

Her eyes seemed to be taking an inventory of the room, not with any particular urgency but in an offhand way. It wasn't all that important but she might as well get it done with. Her look lingered on the curtains. But it wasn't possible to tell why. She looked at me. She knew immediately who I was supposed to be.