Strange Loyalties (9 page)

‘Wrong. Wrong again. Let me enlighten your abysmal ignorance. The answer is . . . Wait for it . . .'

The answer was, apparently, Gustavus – ‘as in Adolphus'. Well, the truth was that his name was actually Gustave, since his ancestors had moved from Sweden to France and naturalised the name accordingly. But it had been originally Gustavus. The heavily built man who had been outlining his exotic origins looked as Scottish as a haggis. His ability to decorate the truth with lies and the appreciative response his talent evoked confirmed my sense of the hopelessness of my quest.

We're all experts in concealment, hailing one another's disguises as if they were old friends. Among this jostling crowd of masks, many of which were my own, I couldn't expect to look upon the truth of what had happened to my brother. There's nobody here but us liars.

But by the time the cabaret was over a small revelation had given me renewed hope. Although it was as insubstantial as misting on a mirror, it meant my belief in understanding wasn't quite dead. I realised who had been speaking.

Scott had mentioned him to me more than once and I had a conviction of having seen him around the town when I was younger, though the effects of his aging made me uncertain about that. His name was Gus McPhater. Presumably Gus was short for Angus. The fact that he had just spent several minutes elaborately denying that this was the case made it seem likely.

He was the Baron Münchhausen of the Akimbo Arms. The lies he told were local legend. According to Scott's intermittent reports to me, Gus McPhater had designed the Queen Mary (‘But some bastard altered the plans. Never was the boat it shoulda been!'), had written the James Bond books (‘Ian
Fleming paid me a lump sum. Ye can shove yer publicity') and designed the first mini-skirt, foisting it on an unsuspecting public for his own voyeuristic purposes (‘At my age, ye take yer pleasure where ye can get it'). He was a former merchant seaman.

I was standing in the public bar. Through the arched doorway that joined this gantry to the one in the lounge, I could see that the lounge was almost empty. Two elderly women with plastic shopping-bags beside them on the cushioned bench-seat were tippling quietly, nodding into each other's remarks. The bar wasn't much busier. Besides the artiste and myself, there were two men studying the horses as well as a young man distant enough to be into transcendental meditation and a vociferously unemployed bricklayer, wearing a boilersuit, as if the call to build something might come at any moment. From things Scott had said, I recognised the tall barman as well. His name was Harry and he looked as happy as a Rechabite at a wine-tasting. I recalled one of Scott's quotes from Gus McPhater: ‘Harry does for conversation what lumbago does for dancin'.'

It was that time just after opening when a pub begins to come awake, starts a new day inside the old one, as if the morning had a stutter. The ice was brimming the bucket. The linoleum floor was devoid of cigarette-ends. The moted sunlight coming in the window was clear enough to see through.

But, imagining Scott's nights here, I populated the emptiness. This had been one of his places and some small part of his spirit had been left here. Holding my own brief seance for my brother, I conjured vivid faces and loud nights. I saw that smile of his, sudden as a sunray, when he loved what you were
saying. I saw the strained expression when he felt you must agree with him and couldn't get you to see that. I caught the way the laughter would light up his eyes when he was trying to suppress it. I heard the laughing when it broke. He must have had some nights here. He had lived with such intensity. The thought was my funeral for him. Who needed possessions and career and official achievements? Life was only in the living of it. How you act and what you are and what you do and how you be were the only substance. They didn't last either. But while you were here, they made what light there was – the wick that threads the candle-grease of time. His light was out but here I felt I could almost smell the smoke still drifting from its snuffing.

I looked across at the preposterousness of Gus McPhater. He, too, however marginally, had moved within the orbit of that light. He was sitting at a small, round, formica table, a third of a pint in front of him. He was staring at the floor. His short performance was over. He had the emptiness of an actor who has just divested himself of his role. I believed in who he was in silence more than who he had been in noise, despite the laughter of the others.

Watching him, I saw more than a vaudeville turn. He might be able to tell me something about Scott. Yet what was the point of talking to a professional liar? Then I remembered something else Scott had told me about him. He had a daughter who died young and it had made him a recluse for years. When he re-emerged into life, he came complete with armour-plated lies. I remembered Scott, lover of paradox, saying, ‘His gift is modesty.' I think he meant that he chose to be a variety of people that he wasn't rather than just be himself. ‘His patter's
a lapwing,' Scott had said. ‘It leads you where he isn't. Because where he is is too vulnerable.'

I went over to where he was.

‘Excuse me,' I said. ‘You're Gus McPhater?'

He looked up slowly and by the time his eyes met mine he had remembered his lines.

‘This is correct, young man,' he said.

He showed no surprise that a stranger should come up and know his name. Perhaps he was used to it. Perhaps he thought I was an autograph-hunter.

‘Can I buy you a drink?'

‘This is permissible behaviour.'

‘A pint of McEwan's?'

‘This is correct.'

He drank off what he had left and handed me the glass. I went across to the bar. Harry accepted my order as if it was just another small boil on the bum of Job. I brought the pint of heavy over to Gus McPhater and put my fresh glass of soda and lime on the table beside him. As I sat down, I saw him analysing the contents of my glass.

‘Are you an alcoholic, son?' he said.

I couldn't help laughing at the innocent decadence of his assumption.

‘Not yet,' I said. ‘Give me another fortnight. No, I'm driving.'

‘Well, that's good thinking,' he said. ‘The bar and the car don't mix. Eh? The bevvy and the Chevvy. No way.'

The words were so obviously rehearsed and delivered so archly that I had a momentary dread that the list wasn't finished. I foresaw, in a second of panic, having to endure McPhater's
Thesaurus of Drinking and Driving – the poteen and the machine, the bender and the fender.

‘I'm Jack Laidlaw,' I said. ‘Scott's brother.'

I knew in his immediate reaction that Scott's assessment had been accurate and my hope had been justified. This was a man who knew the public from the private. He only gave guided tours of himself to tourists. I wasn't there as one. He grimaced and exhaled for several seconds, as if he was emptying himself of all the things he might have said to the stranger I wasn't. When he looked at me, his eyes were a shyness making my acquaintance.

‘Of course,' he said. ‘Ah should've known ye from Scott. Actually, Ah saw ye a few times a lotta years ago. Ye were just a boy, really. But a wee bit tasty, Ah recall.'

I had a noisy youth.

‘You're the polisman.'

‘Not today, I'm not,' I said.

‘Ach, Scott,' he said. ‘Ah was sorry to hear that. Ye know what Ah thought when Ah heard it? This is no crap. Ah thought, here's me. Ah mean, Jeanie an' me get on well enough. Minus the occasional re-run of Waterloo. But Ah've done what Ah'm gonny do. Ye know what Ah mean? That Scott had a lot to do yet. Ah think maybe Ah would've volunteered tae take his place. Given the chance. Maybe not, mind ye. But maybe Ah would. An' he's the only one outside ma own Ah could even think that about. There's a few Ah wouldn't've minded helpin' to shove under the car. Your Scott was different.'

‘Well, you won't get any argument from me.'

‘Thanks for the drink, son. It seems to be a Laidlaw habit. Ah got enough of them from Scott.'

He took a sip of his beer.

‘That was a bad one. They're all bad. But that was a bad one.'

‘Did you see him much before he died?'

He looked round the bar as if establishing in his memory Scott's location there.

‘Well,' he said, ‘Ah hope you don't mind me sayin' this. Jack, isn't it? But Scott wasn't the same man before he died. Ah mean, Ah know it was an accident an' that. But it was like he was the accident already. He just hadn't found the address. Ye know what they say. Like lookin' for a place to happen.'

He continued with that theme and I listened interestedly enough but it wasn't anything I didn't know. At least I was talking to someone who had known Scott and who made me feel less alien to the town. But it was all so general, as if the complexity that had been my brother was already, within a month, being processed into plastic clichés – ‘not happy in his marriage', ‘hitting the bottle', ‘a waste of a good man'. I was looking for Scott, not an identikit of disillusioned West of Scotland man.

Then Gus McPhater, like someone digging a vegetable garden who turns up a human bone, said something that was specific to Scott and which I wanted to examine.

‘Ah saw him that night.'

‘Sorry?'

‘Scott. Ah saw him that night.'

‘Where?'

‘Where else would Ah be?' he said. ‘In here. Ah saw him in here. The night he was killed.'

‘Was that long before he died?'

‘Be a few hours, Ah suppose.'

‘What was he like?'

‘He was well on. That's what he was like. He was givin' the gin and tonics a terrible lacin'. No wonder he fell out with people. He had been a few places before he came in here, Ah'd say. High as ye get he was. He came in here as if it was a saloon an' he was Billy The Kid.'

The image of aggression didn't suit Scott. I remembered his archaic chivalry the last time we had been drinking together. That was central to my sense of him. But Katie Samson had mentioned his untypical quarrel of a few months ago. There had been the incident at the party. And now Gus McPhater was describing him as if he were someone else. As a stalwart of the Akimbo Arms, Gus must have seen some angry men in his time. His assessment of the wildness of Scott's behaviour had the authority of a connoisseur behind it. I watched him hold the moment in his mind, weighing it appreciatively.

‘My God,' he said. ‘Ye see them all in here. If ye just wait long enough. The ones that are just lookin' for a face to waste. The ones that are lookin' for where they used to be at the bottom of the glass. The ones that've only a pint between them an' slittin' their wrists. An' Ah'm tellin' ye. That was some Scott that night. That was a man wi' bad things in his head.'

I wondered what the bad things were. A part of me argued that they were probably only the general unhappiness of his life. But I suspected an acceleration of despair towards the end of his time, as if another, final ingredient had been added to the brew of grief that was poisoning his being. It was that ingredient I wanted to isolate. I was wondering if it could be the man in the green coat's miraculous act of dying again.

‘You said he fell out with people,' I said. ‘Was there anybody in particular?'

‘Oh, yes. There was.'

‘Who was it?'

‘Well, the way Scott came in, ye would've thought it could be anybody. But when Scott exploded, Ah remember thinkin' that's who he had been lookin' for all the time.'

‘So who?' I was hungry for another name on which to focus, some specific that would bring my suspicions into clearer perspective. ‘Who was it?'

‘Fast Frankie White.'

I had a name all right but it blurred things further. The irony was that I knew the name and it should have clarified things. Fast Frankie White (‘the ladies' delight') was a petty criminal. He belonged to my world, not to Scott's. I could think of no reason why Scott should have fallen out with him. Perhaps it was something just born of the moment.

‘Was there a fight?' I said.

‘Just words. Bad words.'

‘What about?'

‘That, Ah don't know.'

‘You must have some idea.'

‘Well.'

He finished off his pint. I bought him another aid to memory.

‘See, Scott was in here first. Before Frankie, like. He was drinkin' doubles. He wasn't exactly fightin' at that time. But ye could see the safety-catch was off. The eyes were swivellin' a lot. He seemed to be lookin' for something. When Frankie came in, he was it. Scott made a beeline for 'im. Ah don't hold too much wi' Frankie White. You know him?'

‘I know him.'

‘Well, ye'll know what Ah mean then. He's not the worst. But ye don't introduce 'im to yer daughter. But it was Scott that started it all right. Frankie hadn't even ordered a drink. An' Scott's right into his ribs. They're arguin' hot an' heavy. Then Frankie breaks away an' Ah hear him sayin', “Tae hell with it. Ah don't need this. Ah'm barrin' maself.” An' he's off. An' Scott shouts after him. “Aye,” he's shoutin'. “You should bar yerself from everywhere. You should bar yerself from the human race. Ah know what you've done.” An' that's about it. Some of the other boys were askin' Scott what all that was about. But he wouldn't say. An' he didn't hang about much longer. Ah wondered maself if he went lookin' for Frankie. Whatever that was about, it wasn't over for Scott.'

It was now, but he had left some weird hieroglyphs of behaviour behind him that I couldn't decipher. A quarrel with Fast Frankie White was one of the weirdest. They shouldn't have had enough in common to nod to each other, let alone argue. That Scott should feel passionate enough about Frankie to anathematise him was incomprehensible. Also, according to my information, Frankie was supposed these days to be living somewhere in London.