The Dead Hour (17 page)

Somehow, without being called, everyone drifted over to the collapsible chairs in front of the stage and sat down, resting their drinks on the floor and arranging their coats over their knees. Dub slipped away to check the speakers and leads and Paddy checked the door one last time. He wasn’t coming and she was relieved. She sat down at the back, in an aisle seat where Dub could see her face in the light from the stage. He didn’t need a smiling pal in the audience anymore but she did it out of habit. He hadn’t always found it easy.

The lights dropped and Paddy just had long enough to consider the fire hazard involved in blacking out a cellar full of smokers. Dub came rushing up the aisle, brushing Paddy’s shoulder as he passed. The stage lights came up, Dub lifted a gangly leg up the two-foot step onto the stage, took the mike from the stand, and launched into his “why don’t you just go and live in Russia” bit.

It was like making vegans watch a seal cull. The audience had traveled to get here and they were nice people, choosing to giggle their Friday night away instead of getting drunk and fighting with their loved ones or neighbors. Yet here they were, sitting looking at their knees, glancing back for the fire exit while a young man had a low-grade nervous breakdown on stage.

Muggo the Magnificent described the symptoms of his anxiety as they arose: his throat was drying up and now he was shaking, look at his hand, look, he was shaking, it wasn’t like this at parties when he stood up to talk, honestly. My feet are stuck, he told them, I can’t move and I’m sweating. I think I’m going to cry. It would have been a kindness to shoot him.

Dub bolted from the shadows and picked him up like a bit of scenery, carrying him off down the aisle to the bar. Paddy initiated a round of applause.

The next open-mike volunteer came on without an introduction from Dub, who would be busy in the back room feeding a sugary drink to the dying man. He was wearing a brown suit and a jester’s hat, was sweating and too excited, trembling a little. He leaned too close into the mike, making an ear-raking pop.

“Okay,” he said, “listen up, arseholes, because this is funny.” Somewhere in the world this would have got a laugh. Sadly, that place was not here.

“Christ,” muttered Paddy, and got up to go to the toilet for a break from the carnage.

“Hoi, fatso.” The guy onstage had spotted her. “What do you do for a living?”

She turned on him with a look she had learned on the newsroom floor. He flinched, knowing that he might be holding the mike and have the benefit of amplification but he had picked on the wrong fat bird tonight. He buckled and the audience saw it. Some of them turned and looked back at Paddy.

“What do you do?” he repeated.

“I book comedians,” she said loudly.

The audience laughed, with surprise at the level of aggression, snowballing into gratitude that she had given them an excuse to let off some energy, which was what they had paid their money for. Paddy used the noisy hiatus to slip off to the empty ladies’ loo.

She checked herself in the mirror. Across a darkened room a bad comic could see she was overweight. She took hold of the pocket of fat under her chin and gave it a vicious little squeeze. She wasn’t trying hard enough. Everyone was losing weight on the F plan but she was dreaming of chocolate and sugary icing on sticky buns, hoovering up calories. She hadn’t enjoyed a guilt-free mouthful for months. She didn’t know why she couldn’t have been born slim like Mary Ann.

She back-combed her hair with her fingers at the side where it had gone a bit flat, then ran her finger under her eyes to straighten her chewy black eyeliner and stepped back out just in time for the break.

The joking policeman was standing at the bar looking as much like an off-duty polis as was possible without swinging a truncheon. He was dressed in stay-press slacks and a smart V-neck sweater over a shirt. The barman brought him a long clear drink with lemon and ice in it and he sipped it, smiling faintly at the stage area of the room.

Paddy considered bolting back into the ladies’ and staying there until he went away. But Dub would come looking for her. Worse, the policeman might ask for her and then everyone would know he was there to see her. She took a deep breath and walked over.

“All right there?”

“Hi,” he said, smiling a crocodile grin. “Hi. You look nice.”

She noticed with horror that he had taken off his wedding ring.

“Did you catch any of the acts there?”

“No.” As he looked her up and down his smile slipped to the side of his face and nestled there. “Can’t say I did.”

“They weren’t very good.”

It was halftime and members of the audience gathered around them, pressing for the bar, repeating Paddy’s assessment about the quality of the acts. She looked over and saw Dub skulking in the doorway to the keg cellar, an area jokingly referred to as backstage.

Below the level of the bar, in the dark at pelvis height, the policeman’s hand found Paddy’s. He took hold of her fingers, pressing meaningfully. Shocked, Paddy yanked her hand away and muttered “No!” in a manner that conveyed her disgust so fluently there could be no going back or dressing it up.

He turned on her. “You fucking invited me here,” he said, and loomed over her.

Paddy grabbed his sleeve and pulled him out of the crowd. She led him over to the audience seats. A couple of them were still occupied, people keeping the places or watching their friend’s belongings, staring at the empty stage, taking in the ripped curtain and the broken chair half-hidden behind it.

She sat him down. “I invited you here because you’re funny, not because I fancy ye. I don’t. It was the middle of the night and I got confused and grabbed your hand by mistake. You’re very funny. You should know that this comedy club is here. Because you’re funny.”

It was like a rejection wrapped in a compliment. He looked at the blank stage and the punters watching it, looked at Paddy again. It seemed to Paddy that he remembered he didn’t really fancy her anyway. He decided to let it go. He nodded. “I am funny.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“And what’re you after? You want to manage me or something?”

“I don’t want anything from you. I don’t even want to be friends with you, but I come here every week and watch six unfunny comics for every good one. I thought you’d like to know about it.”

Dub appeared at Paddy’s side, staring at the policeman, who stood up and held his hand out.

“Right, pal? Are you one of the comics?”

“Yeah.” Dub shook his hand firmly once and let go. “I compere here. Dub MacKenzie.”

“I’m George Burns.”

Dub reeled as if he’d been slapped on the back of the head. He shook his head at Burns. “No, pal,” he said, “what you are is comedy fucking gold.”

A BAD TIME FOR BIG GIRLS

The audience had gone home. The comics and bartenders were all sitting at a corner table in the empty cellar, sipping their staff drink. For the open-mike attempters it was the only kind of payment they’d get for their efforts, one shitty drink, a pint of the cheapest lager or a sweet wine. Paddy thought they were being overpaid.

Lorraine was two giggles and a hair flick away from offering herself there and then to George Burns. Paddy watched him, noting that he was pleased at the girl’s attentions but also somehow detached, observing Lorraine’s behavior and thinking about it.

Lorraine listened to his stories along with the rest of the table, laughing extra hard at the punch lines, sitting forward to fill his line of vision, touching her hair, her décolletage, her lips, drawing his eye to them. Burns held the table rapt. He had never done a gig, yet almost every comic at the table was listening to him talk. Usually, Paddy had noticed, when one of them told a joke another comedian would tell a better one, or interrupt to rewrite the punch line, but they were all deferring to Burns, laughing at his stories and enjoying him. It wasn’t because of his age, either; it was because he was a great storyteller and the police was the perfect place to pick up material. Even Dub listened, smiling at the table and nodding occasionally, mentally charting the technicalities of what Burns was doing instinctively.

Paddy downed the last of a flat Coke she had bought an hour ago, pulled her scarf on, and stood up, announcing that she would need to leave now for the last train. Normally Dub walked her to the station, but before he had the chance to reach for his coat Burns shot to his feet, knocking Lorraine over a little.

“I’ll run you home.”

“No,” she said, “no, I’ve got a Transcard anyway. It’s not costing me.”

“I need to talk to you about the guy you mentioned the other day.” He glanced at the adoring clowns around the table and decided to risk the indiscretion. “Lafferty.”

Dub dropped his hand to his lap and conceded to him. He could only offer to walk her to the station. He didn’t have a car.

“Oh,” she said, “okay.”

Burns looked at everyone. “I’ll see you next week.”

“Brilliant,” said Muggo the Magnificent.

Burns and Paddy gathered their things and said their good-byes. She felt proud being escorted out by him. She didn’t like him or want to spend time with him but she loved the idea of Lorraine and the others watching them leave together. Lorraine looked crestfallen that he was leaving with someone else. Even Dub, who had just been usurped as their leader, raised his hand in salute: “See ye, Paddy.”

Paddy led the way upstairs, aware that Burns’s eyes were watching her fat arse. She found herself putting an extra bit of swing in her walk, swaggering almost, not ashamed of her body the way she usually was when she felt observed.

Upstairs in the pub the staff were cleaning up, washing ashtrays and loading dirty glasses onto the bar. One guy dragged a trash bag after him, gathering rubbish from the tables. No one acknowledged Paddy and Burns as they walked to the far doors and let themselves out into the frosted street.

Burns rolled his shoulders back proudly when he reached his car, a Triumph TR7 sports car, beige with black trim, the roof sloped backward as if bent by the incredibly high speeds the car routinely reached. Through the window she could see bucket seats upholstered in black leather, designed to curl around the body, with matching lush headrests and a leather-coated steering wheel. She was impressed but determined not to comment on it.

“I stay in Eastfield, know it?”

“Yeah.” He looked a bit surprised. “Had you down as a Pollockshaws girl, to be honest. Somewhere a bit nicer.”

“Eastfield is nice, it’s just fallen on hard times.”

He unlocked the passenger door for her, giving her a frank look that lingered too long to be innocent. He skirted around the bonnet for the driver’s door as Paddy climbed into the low seat. The interior of the car was immaculately clean; she could imagine Burns lovingly oiling the leather on his days off.

He opened his own door and dropped in next to her, smiling to himself, anticipating his return to the comedy club next week. “You watch a lot of comedy, tell me this: what goes down better, characters or observational stuff?”

She thought about it. “Well,” she said, “character does well initially but observational has a longer life. You can keep the same act for years with observational but it’s easier to make a breakthrough with a novelty character.”

He smiled at the road as he started the engine. “Which attracts the most birds, though?”

Uncomfortable, she arranged her narrow black skirt to hide her fat legs. “So,” she said, “how long have you been married?”

He tutted sullenly and looked at her. “You don’t mess about, do you?”

She shrugged. “I’m just asking.”

Burns flicked on the indicator and checked the empty street, looking over his shoulder, avoiding the straight answer. “Why? Are you married?”

“Burns, if I was married I’d wear my wedding ring all the time and everyone would know.”

They drove on in a heavy rankling silence for a few minutes, negotiating their way out of the deserted narrow valleys between the buildings. The pine air freshener swung rhythmically from the mirror, the cellophane envelope hanging off it like a pair of trousers dropped to the knees. She should have taken the train.

They hit the main thoroughfare and the Friday-night traffic. Closing-time drunks littered the streets, staggering out in front of the traffic and causing trouble among the bus stop queues. A woman wearing a flying suit and gold belt with strappy high heels swung her handbag playfully at her boyfriend. Paddy saw short rara skirts and ski pants and nipped waists. It was a bad time for big girls. She suddenly thought of Vhari Burnett and remembered that she had to get Burns talking if she wanted to find out who Lafferty was.

“The town’s been quieter in the past month or so,” she told the window. “Or maybe it just seems that way.”

“It is quieter. Do you want to know why?”

“Go on, then, why?”

“I’ll show you.” Burns swung the car in a sharp U-turn, doubling back through the Trongate in a highly illegal maneuver and cutting through a red light. He drove onto the Gorbals, taking the Rutherglen Road and an off-ramp to St. Theresa’s Chapel next to the high-rises. For a moment Paddy thought it was a bad idea to be alone with this man; there was a frightening energy at his core. If he did anything to her she wouldn’t be able to go to the police: he was the police.

Burns pulled over and stopped the engine, sliding down in his seat.

“Watch,” he said.

They were across the road from the shopping center, in a tall, wide alleyway straddled by massive stilts supporting the high flats above it. The breadth of the building was picked out in wide stripes of gray and black. The underbelly of the flats was a stained concrete slab. Between the stilts was a row of squat, shuttered shops.

It was a familiar scene to Paddy. The next-door police station was a nightly stop for her and Billy. It was usually the last stop before the death burger van at two thirty and the lit blue POLICE sign hanging over the door made her feel hungry and a little bit excited at the prospect of a cheeseburger. The incidents in the station were usually drink-related family fights.