The Big Man (8 page)

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Can Ah help ye?’

‘The boy’s just talkin’.’

‘Not any more he’s not.’

They watched each other.

‘An’ if he does open his mouth, he’ll get it.’

‘You’ll not touch the boy.’

‘Are you his daddy?’

The pressure was balanced evenly between them and, deliberately, with very measured calculation, Billy Fleming tilted it in his favour.

‘Well, you’ll get it as well, if ye interfere.’

Dan Scoular smiled, realising Vince had been a decoy. The smile was camouflage he knew couldn’t protect him much longer. He was angry with himself for having been so easily left with no options. He thought of something Betty had once said of him: ‘When you walk into a room, the only attitude that seems to occur to you is, “What game do you play here? I bet I can play that as good as you.” It never seems to occur to you to say, “I don’t believe in that game. I think it’s a rotten game. I’m not playing.” Why do you think you have to accept the rules?’ It looked as if he had done it again. But he was in the game now and all he could think of to do was try and play it with style.

‘You want it badly, don’t ye?’ he said.

He walked towards the other man and, as Billy Fleming tensed in preparation, walked past him. Billy Fleming was momentarily uncertain, thinking he was being walked out on. He was glancing towards Matt Mason as he heard Dan Scoular speaking from the door, which was open.

‘Alan doesny like fights in his pub,’ he said and went out.

As Billy Fleming followed, Matt Mason stood and went to the
window. The assurance of his action, as if he had declared himself the promoter of this fight, magnetised the still-stunned reactions of the others into imitation. Nobody followed the two men out. Frankie White crossed towards the window and the three domino players rose and moved hurriedly after him. Alan came tentatively out from the carapace of his bar, paused, turned back for his glass, perhaps thinking he might need its assistance to get as far as the window, and slowly joined them. Vince Mabon, not knowing what else to do, took his place there, too. They had become an audience.

At first all they could see were their images reflected in the curtainless window, a motley group portrait straining into the darkness to look at themselves. Then the headlights of a car came on. They saw Billy Fleming take off his jacket and lay it across the bonnet of the car. Dan Scoular kept on his light jerkin.

The figures flickered briefly in the headlights of the car and it was over, like a lantern-slide show that breaks down just as it’s getting started. They were looking at an effect that didn’t appear to have had any very clear cause. Billy Fleming’s head hit the ground with a soundless and sickening jolt that some grimacing expulsions of breath in the bar provided the sound-track for. He lay with a peacefulness that suggested he had found his final resting place. A man came out of the car and Dan Scoular started to help him to lift Billy Fleming into the back seat. Billy Fleming had obviously regained consciousness before they got him there but he raised no objections to their assistance.

The realisation that he didn’t appear to be too seriously hurt opened a valve on the tension of what they had just seen and humour blew out, a gush of relief at not having to go on confronting seriously the reality of violence.

‘Ah’m glad Ah didny buy a ticket for that one,’ Sam MacKinlay said. ‘Ah wish it had been on the telly. At least we could see a slow-motion replay.’

Nearly everybody laughed. Dan Scoular walked back in to a festive atmosphere that caught him unawares. He had been involved in that mood of nervous recuperation that had always followed a fight for him, a dazed sense of having had his self- control mugged by his own violence. Their smiling faces seemed
to him contrived. They couldn’t be feeling something as simple as their expressions showed. He felt like a man in quicksand with whom other people were leaning over to shake hands. Nobody had wanted the fight to happen and now everybody seemed delighted that it had. Even the man who had been with the one he hit was smiling.

‘Right!’ he was saying to Alan. ‘Everybody gets a drink. Give everybody what they’re having. And a gin and tonic for me.’

Frankie White was looking at him and saying, ‘What did Ah tell ye? One good hit!’

‘Come on,’ the man said. ‘Do it. And a double for yourself.’

The room was becoming a party and Dan Scoular was apparently the guest of honour. It seemed churlish not to attend. He shrugged.

‘Ye not want to get yer big bodyguard a pint on a drip?’ Sam MacKinlay shouted.

Everybody was laughing. Alan Morrison was hurrying about behind the bar as if the place was crowded.

‘A few folk will be sorry that they weren’t here the night,’ he said.

Before Dan Scoular had cleared his head, he was sitting at a table with Frankie White and the other man.

‘Dan,’ Frankie White was saying. ‘This gentleman is Matt Mason. Matt, you’ve seen who this is. Dan Scoular in person. A man with a demolition-ball at the end of each wrist.’

The talk of the others was like background music, all being played by special request for Dan Scoular. Matt Mason shook hands with him. The man who had been in the car came in and sat at their table. Matt Mason introduced him.

‘Ah think Big Billy has a slight case of concussion,’ Eddie Foley said. ‘His head hit the ground with a terrible wallop.’

The domino players were shouting over.

‘Thanks, mate.’

‘Cheers!’

‘All the best.’

Matt Mason gave them a regal wave.

‘A lucky hit, you think?’ he asked Eddie Foley teasingly.

Eddie Foley laughed.

‘Came out a telescopic rifle, that punch. If that was lucky, beatin’ the Light Brigade was a fluke. This man can go a bit.’

‘He would have to against Cutty.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Dan Scoular said. He looked at Frankie White. ‘What did you set me up for here?’

Matt Mason held up his hands.

‘I can explain,’ he said. ‘You want to give me a minute?’

‘Ah don’t know.’

Dan Scoular was trying to work out what had happened to bring him here. He had said ‘Hey!’ and the word had been as mysterious in effect as ‘Open Sesame’. His night had been transformed. The result was slightly dazzling but he didn’t like being dazzled and beyond the surface laughter and brightness he had already glimpsed shadows that troubled him. Frankie White had been standing at the bar when Dan came in but he hadn’t just been standing at the bar. Matt Mason had been sitting with the man Dan hit and now he hadn’t even asked about him. It was as if the man had served the purpose he was brought for. He was expendable. Someone had been waiting in the car to switch on the lights. Dan had thought he had been getting involved in a spontaneous fight but it had only been a controlled experiment. In doing what he had thought was winning for himself and Vince Mabon, Dan had been winning, it seemed, for Matt Mason. It had been a fight Matt Mason couldn’t lose. The rules were strange here.

‘Dan,’ Frankie White said. ‘Just listen to the man a minute, will you? Please?’

Alan had brought the drinks across, rested a stepfatherly hand on Dan’s shoulder as he put down his pint.

‘That’s how we used to breed them in these parts,’ he said, staking an early claim to proprietorship of this evening’s legend.

Dan sipped his pint and waited. Realising Alan had gone off without giving him anything, Eddie Foley passed a pound to Frankie White.

‘Get us a whisky and a half pint, Frankie.’

Dan Scoular watched Frankie White’s receding back with thoughtfulness.

That was Billy Fleming you saw away there,’ Matt Mason said.

‘How is he?’ Dan asked Eddie Foley.

‘Beat,’ Matt Mason said. ‘You ever lost a fight?’

‘Aye.’

‘How many?’

‘Just the one. But Ah haven’t had too many.’

‘Who was that?’

‘Ma feyther.’

‘Your father? What age were you?’

‘Ah would be nineteen.’

‘How did that come about?’

Dan Scoular looked at him, decided that whatever his reasons for asking were, he had no reasons for not telling.

‘Ah was a cocky boy. Ah hit a man for no reason. Just because Ah felt like it. He didny want to fight. Ah broke his jaw. Ma feyther took me out the back door. An’ hammered me.’

Matt Mason gave the event his expert consideration, offered the balm of his wisdom to the dead wound.

‘Maybe you weren’t trying. I mean, fighting your father. That’s bound to put brakes on you.’

‘Oh, Ah was tryin’ all right. But Ah was in the wrong. That’s a bad corner to come out of.’

‘You superstitious?’

‘What’s that got to do wi’ superstition? Ah walk under ladders an’ everythin’.’

‘I mean, having less chance if you’re in the wrong?’

Frankie White had returned from the camaraderie at the bar. He put down Eddie Foley’s two drinks. Eddie held out his hand and Frankie remembered the change. Dan Scoular watched the handing over of the silver. He took a sip of his pint.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘Ah just believe in certain things. Like what ma feyther told me that day. If ye can’t fight for the right reasons, keep yer hands in yer pockets.’

‘And what are the right reasons?’

‘Ah’m not always sure. But he seemed to be.’

Matt Mason held up his glass and paused before taking a drink. He might have been showing off his rings.

‘You want to make some money?’

Dan Scoular looked slowly round the group at the table. His look separated himself from them, as if they were a conspiracy.

‘What?’ he said. ‘Was that an interview for a job?’

‘In a way.’

‘But, mister, Ah didny apply.’

‘All right. But I’m asking you. Do you want to make some money?’

‘Who doesny want to make some money? But there’s money and money.’

Matt Mason looked at Frankie White.

‘Does he like talking in riddles?’ he said and looked back at Dan. ‘There’s only one kind of money. The good stuff. Unless it’s home-made. And this won’t be. All right?’

‘Ah just mean some money’s dearer than others. Some just costs sweat. Some costs yer self-respect. What do Ah do for it?’

‘You do what you’re good at. You fight.’

‘For money? You mean in a ring?’

Matt Mason was enjoying the revelation to come. He took out a leather cigar-case and offered Dan Scoular a cigar. Dan shook his head. Eddie, who had taken out his cigarettes, didn’t seem to notice Frankie White about to take one. He held out the packet to Dan Scoular.

‘Ah don’t smoke.’

‘Ah told ye,’ Frankie said.

But he missed the point. It wasn’t a matter of checking on his information. It was improvised stage-business, self-taught management technique for controlling situations. Matt Mason’s timing was a matter of instinct but what he used it to promote was a well-rehearsed performance. He lit Eddie’s cigarette with his gold lighter and then his own cigar. He re-emerged looking at Dan from behind a slowly dissipating cloud of smoke, Merlin of the cigar.

‘I’m arranging a bare-knuckle fight,’ he said.

Dan Scoular looked across towards the others in the bar as if checking his location in normalcy. Having confirmed his fix on where he was, he looked back at these three as if they were
somewhere else, maybe inhabiting their own fantasy or just trying to take the mickey out of him. Frankie White was nodding reassuringly.

‘What for?’ Dan said.

‘It’s a complicated story,’ Matt Mason said. ‘Frankie White’ll tell you. If you agree to do it. If you don’t, you won’t have to know, will you?’

‘Ye’re kiddin’.’

‘I stopped kidding when I came out of the pram.’

Dan took a sip of his pint. It seemed to feel strange in his mouth. The idea was so bizarre that he came at it tangentially.

‘Ah’ve had a few scuffles,’ he said. ‘But they were always for a reason.’

‘Money’s not a reason?’

‘A fight in the street’s different.’

‘What’s different? You’re doing the same thing, aren’t you? It’s man against man.’

‘Naw. It’s different. Ah’ve watched a lot of boxing on the telly. That’s a different game. More complicated. Street fightin’s just two things.’

‘What would they be?’

‘Suddenness. And meanin’ it. Ye go fast. If ye can, ye go first. An’ ye stop when it’s over. That’s all Ah can do.’

‘Should be enough.’

‘Anyway,’ Eddie Foley said, ‘that’s not true, big man. Listen –’

Vince Mabon had come over to their table. Matt Mason looked up as if wherever he sat he was booking a private room and Vince hadn’t knocked. Eddie Foley cut his sentence dead. It was less polite than talking on and ignoring Vince’s presence would have been.

‘Excuse me, Dan,’ Vince Mabon said. ‘Ah want to thank you for what you did there.’

‘Any time, Vince. We’ve got to protect the nation’s intellectuals.’

But the demon of sloganising that was in Vince had to climb on to even his gratitude like a soap-box.

‘But I still don’t agree with that kind of violence. That wasn’t the kind of violence I was talking about.’

‘Maybe,’ Matt Mason said, ‘he should’ve left you to explain that to Big Billy. In the dummy alphabet.’

Perhaps Vince was learning from humiliation but this second time around he found a response. With a slightly unsteady hand, he put his partly drunk pint on their table.

‘I don’t think I want your drink, mister,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t taste right.’

Matt Mason looked as if he was going to get up. Dan took hold of Vince’s arm with his left hand and held up his right, palm towards Mason.

‘Okay, Vince,’ he said. ‘Cheers.’

He let go of Vince’s arm and Vince walked straight out of the pub.

‘He’s only a boy,’ Dan said.

‘He’s only a shitehead.’

‘He’s only a boy. You’re maybe big where you come from, sir. But this is his pub.’

‘His pub?’ Matt Mason smiled. ‘Does he own it? Mind you, who would want to? It’s your pub when you own it. Not when you buy a couple of beers in it. I should know. I own more than one.’

‘Matt,’ Eddie Foley said. ‘Anyway, we came for a reason. Listen, Dan. As Ah wis sayin’. Ye’re wrong about all it is that ye can do. Suddenness and meanin’ it? Against Big Billy, Ah could be just as sudden and mean it more. And it wouldn’t do me a lotta good. It would still be a short-cut to the blood bank. You’ve got somethin’ special. Ah’m tellin’ ye. Ah’ve seen a few. It’s just that ye haven’t explored it yet. And you’re a mug if ye don’t. A mug! It’s a talent like anythin’ else. Maybe the only one ye’ve got. It might amaze ye what ye can do with it. It might amaze ye the money it could get ye. You never considered that?’