There's Only One Danny Garvey, page 11
‘We could break in. Find out the answer tae the dominant question ae the age. Nick some lead off the roof while we’re there … make it worth the effort?’
‘Aye … that’d be a good look, eh? A coupla thirty-year-olds shinnyin’ up they auld drainpipes tae crack open a church.’
‘Hey, ah’ll thirty ye. Twenty-nine if ye don’t mind!’
‘Tough paper round wis it?’
‘Cheeky bitch.’
She laughs and it warms the air around us. It’s staggering how quickly I’ve become comfortable in her company.
‘Where were ye workin’ earlier?’ I ask.
‘The baker’s,’ she replies.
‘Ye like it?’
‘Hate it,’ she replies, quick as a flash. ‘Ah love bakin’ but ah can’t stand the way the shop’s run. Ernie’s a nice enough guy, but there’s nae ambition at all. He’s too lazy. The shop’s barely survivin’.’
‘How long ye been there?’
‘Since 1985. Eleven years. Jesus … a third ae my life!’ She sighs. ‘It’s become a habit. Too scared tae chuck it, an’ hunt for somethin’ better, y’know?’
‘Aye.’ It mirrors my own employment. When I finally did make a move, it was backwards. Here. Arguably three steps backwards. ‘When did ye first meet Raymond?’
Nancy smirks at this. I’m not sure how to take it. ‘When ah first met your brother, he wasn’t house-trained.’ She laughs. ‘Me an’ Mam moved here in 1984. From Cumbernauld. Ah was eighteen at the time. My dad was a right bastard. Permanently drunk. Permanently violent wi’ it. He’d lift his fist tae mam for no reason. Rangers got beat … wallop. Thatcher’s on telly … wallop. Dinner no’ ready … wallop. First time he did it tae me, Mam hit him back. An’ ended up in hospital. Ah phoned the police. They gave her fifty quid an’ the address ae a women’s refuge in Ayrshire. Six months later, we’re here. She got a council house an’ a job servin’ school dinners. We’ve never seen him since.’
‘Jesus, ah’m sorry.’ I’m saying that a lot.
‘Raymond was the first customer ah served on my first day.’ She smiles sweetly at the memory. ‘A doughnut, if ah remember rightly.’
‘Aye, yer no’ wrong there.’ We stand in sync. ‘Listen, ye got time for a quick drink? At The King’s?’
‘Ah should really get back,’ she says. Mam’s gettin’ too old for any ae Damo’s tantrums.’
‘Ye sure? He seemed fine when he left.’
‘His life runs tae a schedule, Danny. If he doesn’t get his dinner at five, that’ll unsettle him.’
‘How about ye look in then, on the way past? If he’s aw’right, come for one, if no’, well maybe another time.’
She nods. I can tell it’s reluctant, but it doesn’t matter.
‘Woah … all hail the conquerin’ fucken hero!’ A round of applause follows this as I walk into The King’s. Most of the team are still there, and several others who I spotted at the game.
‘Aw’right, boss?’ says Paddy Gilhooly, warmly.
‘Aye, Panda, cheers. Well played th’day,’ I respond.
‘An’ who’s this?’ asks Davie Russell. ‘Introduce us, well!’
‘Ah, this is, em … ma broth—…’ I stumble.
‘Ah’m Nancy. Pleased tae me ye,’ says Nancy. Saving me like McIntosh blocking an unexpected toe poke.
‘Whit can ah get ye’se?’ asks Alf, his joviality prompted, no doubt, by the unexpected work his till is having to put in.
‘A Coke for me, please … an’ a…?’
‘…Gin an’ lemonade, please,’ says Nancy.
Higgy wanders over from the pool table, where he’s playing Harry Doyle.
‘Whatta fucken game, son, eh? Telt ye, ye were doin’ the right thing comin’ back here, din’t ah?’ He’s a bit pissed. ‘Aw’right, hen. Sorry about yer maw, earlier an’ that. The wee fella played a blinder, a fucken blinder. Oops, sorry. Mind ma language, love.’
‘It’s fine, Higgy. Ah’m used tae worse.’
‘Here ye’se go,’ says Alf. ‘Aw the best for the season ahead, son.’ His previous recalcitrance transformed in the way that only a football win can prompt. Everyone loves everyone else in the aftermath of a successful ninety minutes.
Even Nancy can see the triumphal effect that it has. It’s too soon to say if Damo has been calmed by it, and I’m certainly not going to advance my amateur theory. But it seems obvious that the boy is pacified by the game. Even when chaos is breaking out around him, there’s something about the pitch, the players, the bloody statistics of this daft wee village team that magnetises and placates him. I reach into my wallet.
Alf puts up a hand. It briefly resembles a Nazi salute. ‘On the house, son,’ he says, before adding, ‘Unless ye’se lose on Wednesday night … then it’s a fiver owed!’
We sit in the only quiet corner left in the lounge. There’s widespread chatter and it’s all good-natured. Billy Gilmour is slumped over a table with several empty glasses on it. He too won’t have to put his hand in a pocket all night. Sean O’Halloran sits next to him, yawning. Denny Peters emerges from the toilets. He glances over, catching sight of me. Like a child caught doing something he shouldn’t have been. I nod my approval.
‘Kinda music do ye like?’ I ask Nancy.
‘The Pogues,’ she says, taking me completely by surprise.
‘Aye?’
‘How, what did ye think ah was goin’ tae say? The Spice Girls?’
‘Well…’
‘Ah saw The Pogues when they played at the Grand Hall in Kilmarnock. Raymond got us the tickets. Ah wis five months pregnant at the time,’ she says. ‘The calm before the storm.’
I put the money in. Punch the numbers. An accordion, and then Shane: ‘One summer evening drunk to hell, I stood there nearly lifeless.’
‘I bloody love this,’ she says. ‘The line about Ray an’ Philomena singing of my elusive dream. Jeez, is that no’ just the saddest thing you’ve ever heard?’ She stares at my face. I too have brown eyes, and it’s like she’s trying to see right through them. To what lies behind.
‘Haw, it’s Danny fucken Garvey!’ A shout from the front door. Familiar. Unwelcome. ‘Budge up, son.’ It’s Dennis Deans, half-cut and louder than he has any need to be. ‘Ye’ve mind ae Charlie here, eh?’ C90-head nods. Eyes almost closed. Too drunk to speak. A mere sixty minutes from renal failure, by the look of him. As he attempts to sit, Charlie’s arse misses the chair and he collapses in slow motion onto the floor.
‘S’aw’right, Alfie boy,’ reassures Dennis. ‘Nae hassle, like. We’re aw pals here, big man, ken what ah mean? Charlie! Charlie boy … wake up, man!’ Charlie gets propped up in a corner, out of the way of the paying punters. A jacket thrown over him.
‘Make sure ye take the cunt wi’ ye, when yer goin’,’ says Alf, as if he was an unwanted umbrella.
‘Aye, aye, aye,’ says Dennis, waving him down.
‘Happened tae yer haun?’ He’s looking at the bandages that Harry Doyle put on my hand after the match. ‘Thought it was yer brother that wis the boxer.’
‘Ach, grazed it against a…’ He’s not listening.
‘So, who’s yer lassie, then?’ he asks. ‘Sure ah’ve seen ye afore though. Mibbe dancin’ up the Bobby Jones?’
‘Ah work in the baker’s,’ says Nancy politely.
‘Servin’?’ asks Dennis, with a confused look on his face. ‘Ah’m in there aw the time tae. Ne’er seen ye.’
‘Ah’m through the back, mostly. The preparation,’ she confirms.
‘Wear a hairnet?’ asks Dennis, as if it’s the only thing he can think of to say. Before Nancy can respond, he’s off on a different route. ‘So, when ye’se comin’ round then?’
‘Eh?’
‘A bit ae grub, an’ that. ‘Member? Ye said so. Ali remembers ye. Says ye were a gardener or somethin’.’ The pace of his delivery is rapid.
‘Whit?’ I ask, unsure where this is all headed.
‘Ye had dirty green fingers, she says. Huvnae a fucken clue what she’s oan about half the time, ken?’ He says this to Nancy. ‘Ah’m fucken gaspin’. Spaced-out. Necked an Eccy earlier.’ I notice Dennis’s foot tapping constantly, like it’s waiting impatiently for a dancefloor to arrive. ‘Sweatin’ like a rapist, so’s ah am.’
The pub’s door opens. A man sticks his head through it. ‘Den? Where the fuck are ye?’
Dennis turns. ‘Let’s fucken go, son. Rocco’s waitin’.’ Dennis turns back to me. He picks up my glass and drains the rest of my non-alcoholic drink in one go. ‘Wan ah owe ye,’ he says. ‘An’ mind, ah need a date for ye’se comin’ round. You an’ yer girlfriend here. Bring some strawberry tarts, if ye’se want.’ He gets up and leaves, forgetting his unconscious colleague.
‘Dennis! Dennis!’shouts Alf. ‘Fuck sake, that’s twice in a fortnight,’ he protests. ‘This cunt’s goin’ in the bottle bank out the back.’
‘Thanks,’
‘What for?’
‘Askin’ me tae come out. It’s been a while.’
‘It was just a wee drink,’ I say. ‘Ah don’t have pals here. Don’t really want any either, but be good if we were friends, ah think.’ It’s an unexpected turn, I must admit.
‘Good for who?’ She’s teasing me.
‘Ach, me,’ I tell her. ‘Ah’d really like tae help out wi’ the wee man. Let him come tae trainin’, as well as the games an’ that.’
‘Let’s take it a step at a time, okay?’
‘Aye. Of course,’ I say.
Nancy looks up. A curtain twitches behind an upstairs window inside her house. ‘She just worries, y’know? It was hard goin’ wi’ Raymond. He wasn’t always a bad guy, yer brother. Just … unreliable.’ Her use of the past tense is telling.
‘Aye, he’s certainly that.’
‘G’night, then.’
‘Aye, ah’ll see ye.’
She walks up the path, unlocks her front door and disappears into the darkness behind it. The upstairs light goes off. I turn and head down the hill. Back to Higgy’s. It’s been a good day. The reasons for hanging around are multiplying. I’ll go and buy some gardening equipment tomorrow morning. I’ll go and see Raymond on Wednesday; the afternoon before the season’s first cup-tie against the holders, Glenafton Athletic.
‘Strugglin’?’
‘Aye, son. Ah’m rough.’ Higgy’s up, looking like an inflatable Bobby Charlton. He gingerly eases himself into his chair. He winces. As if the sound of the fly buzzing around is like having his head buried in the bass speakers at an AC/DC gig.
‘Too auld for it,’ I suggest.
‘Ye might be right there, Danny Boy.’ He coughs phlegm into his hand. ‘Still, a win like that has tae be celebrated.’ He staggers past me to the sink. He rinses the thick, yellowy shite off his hand. It takes a good few turns of the tap to make it go away.
‘Fry-up?’ he asks.
‘Naw, ah’m good,’ I say, watching the same hand reach into his bread bin.
‘So, whit you up tae th’day?’
‘’Member Auld Jock Reid?’
‘Christ, how could ah forget? How could you forget?’
‘Ah didnae forget, ah’m just…’ I don’t know how to finish this line. For years, I couldn’t stop thinking about Jock Reid. About what we’d done to him. ‘Ah saw his wife the other day. Bumped intae her. Ah’m goin’ round tae help her out.’
‘By dain’ what?’ He seems stunned. It’s hard to know why.
‘The garden. The gutters tae maybe. Ah don’t know. Anythin’ that needs done probably. Why?’
‘Listen, son, ye need to be careful if yer gettin’ back intae aw that.’
‘Aw what? What are ye talkin’ about?’
Aul’ Jock Reid … he’s no’ right in the heid. His wife’s a hoor, an’ his daughter’s deid.
I didn’t see Jock Reid after the day of the piano. Not for another five years or so. It was like he’d just vanished. The taunting stopped because there was no-one for us to taunt. But I thought about him a lot. Wrote notes about him. Composed a short story about him in English class. And then suddenly, one frosty morning early in 1981, he was out in the village street. I saw him as I was delivering the papers. He was walking awkwardly, and with a cane. He looked as disorientated as he had back then, years earlier, in the makeshift dump.
‘Are ye aw’right, mister?’ I asked him.
‘Fuck off. Wee prick,’ he grumbled. He kept muttering something. Leave me alone! Please leave me alone, it sounded like.
I should’ve left him. Libby was in the car waiting. She wound down the window and shouted for me to get a move on.
‘Just a minute,’ I yelled back. ‘Let me help ye, Mr Reid.’
‘Get tae buggery,’ he replied. And then he turned to me and said, ‘What have ye done wi’ her? Tell me, ya wee bastard … Ah cannae fucken stand it,’ and there were tears running down his face.
I immediately felt terrible for all the goading and the hateful chanting and for everything he’d been through and I put the ‘papers down and I leaned towards him to take his arm. Maybe to help him home. Libby shouted, ‘Get away fae him.’ And I’m not sure if she meant me or the old man, but I turned to her with arms outstretched, and as I did, Auld Jock Reid brought the cane down forcefully on the back of my head. My hand went up. My blood was running through my fingers. Thick, and matting my hair. He swung it again and a loud crack suggested a broken middle finger. And I was on my knees, howling. And Libby was running towards us. And she launched into both of us, but it was the old man who was downed.
I remember that awful moaning. I couldn’t see him, just one shoeless leg dangling from the small hedge Libby had pushed him over. A door opened. It was six in the morning and the noise was waking people.
The initial charges were dropped, although it took a lot to persuade Libby. Raymond wouldn’t let it go. He wanted money for the inconvenience. He hadn’t been involved at all. For months after it, though, Raymond just wouldn’t let it go.
‘Mrs Reid?’ I’m speaking through the letterbox that bears her name.
‘Yes?’ she replies.
‘Hi, it’s Danny. Ah wis here before. Ah helped ye in wi’ yer milk.’
‘Oh. I remember. Is everythin’ alright son?’
‘Yeah, everythin’s fine. Ah just wanted to see if ah could do yer garden.’
A lock turns, and the door slowly opens.
‘Oh, hullo son, is everythin’ okay?’ she says, as if she’d immediately forgotten the previous exchange. ‘What’ve got there?’ She doesn’t remember me from that night at the police station fourteen years ago. She might, if I told her my surname. But who would that profit?
‘Ah brought some gardenin’ stuff round. Thought ah could maybe tidy up a bit for ye.’
‘Aw, son that’s awfy nice but I can’t afford tae pay for a gardener.’
‘Ah’m no’ lookin’ for payment. Ah just want tae help.’ She looks confused. ‘Ah’m the new manager ae the junior team. It’s just a part-time thing though. Ah’m lookin’ tae fill my time a bit, an’ help some folk out.’
‘Oh son … that’s awfy kind ae ye. Are ye sure now?’
She leaves me to it, and I get going. The grass reaches my waist at the side of the house that faces south. Shears and a sickle are deployed early on. Three hours pass. The surface starts to resemble a hippy being forcibly shorn with bacon scissors. I’m staring at the rough terrain and images resurface. Wee Louise-Anne, playing in her garden. This garden. The gate’s open and the wee dog runs out. And she runs out after it in her bare feet and away to the left and into the woods. The woman across the street was the last person to see her alive. I gaze over at the house. It’s identical to this one. I wonder if the woman still lives there. If she still looks out and wonders if she could have been just a bit quicker to raise the alarm.
‘Oh, that’s lovely,’ says Mrs Reid, when she sees the results of my effort. ‘Yer doin’ a grand job there, son,’ she adds, dragging me back to the present. She’s either going completely blind or just being overly grateful. ‘Here’s a wee drink for ye.’
She hands me a glass of lemonade. It’s flat. Probably bought months ago. But I thank her, drink it and hand her back the glass.
‘Have ye got any bin bags?’ I ask. I’ve already filled the six I brought with me. Garden refuse mainly, but a shoe, four syringes, a dead rat and numerous used condoms were also in there, hidden in the undergrowth.
‘Oh, aye … I think so. In ye come,’ she says, and I follow her. Through the dark, cold hall. Past the framed photographs of family, presumably; what must be a gallery of painful memories for her. We pass through a sitting room and I notice it, the piano. My heart almost stops. She sees me staring at it. I hear music, his music, coming from it.
Aul’ Jock Reid … he’s no’ right in the heid. His wife’s a hoor, an’ his daughter’s deid.
‘Do ye play, son?’ She speaks and breaks the spell.
‘Em … eh, no. Sorry, no, ah don’t.’
‘I can’t either,’ she says. ‘My late husband did. We got rid of it once, but he’d go searchin’ for it when he wis in a bad way. They were difficult times back then. So we got it back here an’ it seemed tae calm him down. I can’t bear tae throw the auld thing out again. Jock loved it that much, ye see.’
I swallow hard. Despite myself, I’m edging closer to the wooden box. The same one I heard him play twenty years previously. I spot a small photograph that’s partially concealed behind a vase.
She sees me looking closely at it. ‘That’s my Jock. Taken when he played for the local team.’
It’s a picture in black and white, of a young man in a football strip. His hair is short, flat and he is smiling. His arms are folded, and his left leg is raised. There’s a dark leather football under his boot.
‘Ah remember the day that was taken … just up the road there. Jock had won player ae the year. Ah didn’t care much for the football,’ she laughs. I turn to leave. ‘An this is Jock wi’ wee Lou, his granddaughter.’ She shows the photograph. There’s no hint of the tragedy behind it. A proud granda, balancing a dark-haired, laughing toddler on his knee. ‘Her an’ that wee Chatty Cathy doll. She went everywhere wi’ it. Pullin’ its cord constantly to make it talk. Drove us mad so it did.’ She purses her lips.
