There's Only One Danny Garvey, page 14
Anne is waiting for me at the bottom of the road. Her car is as distinctive as her: a sporty, purple, two-door Volkswagen Polo. It’s five minutes past nine. I’m slightly late, but only due to the nerves that forced me to vomit twice. I open the door, and loud dance music from the bass-heavy speakers is making the car’s interior vibrate.
‘Mornin’,’ I say, with as much breeziness as I can muster. She looks around and nods. ‘Sorry ah’m late,’ I add. I slump back into a shaped leather seat that seems to reach around and cradle me.
It’s fine, she says. We’re not due there until 11.00 am anyway.
‘So why are we leavin’ so early?’
I just wanted to get to know you a bit better.
‘There’s no’ that much tae know. A return trip tae The King’s Arms would cover it.’
I want to understand how best to use you.
‘Use me?’
Well, if you’re going to be doing promotional duties for Kidd’s Carpets, you’re going to be doing them my way, understand?
‘Em … yeah. Listen, can ah turn the sound down? My head’s hurtin’ a bit.’ I reach out for the volume fader, but she taps my hand.
My car, my rules. After a few minutes of making her point, she turns it down. The vice gripping my skull stops tightening.
‘Who is that, anyway?’
Planet Funk, she replies. ‘Chase the Sun’.
‘Ah. Okay,’ I reply, none the wiser.
You like it?
‘Naw. No’ really. Just a bit mundane an’ monotonous, y’know?’ It’s hard to think, never mind talk, with the music at such ear-splitting volume. Not that I’ve been, but this must be what it’s like talking to someone in the Arches or the Sub Club in Glasgow.
You don’t like music? she asks.
‘Jesus … without music, life would be a mistake.’
Ooh, very profound. And I feel a bit stupid for saying it. So, what kind of music do you like?
‘Hmm … dunno really. Quite eclectic, my tastes,’ I say.
For example?
‘The Smiths, Joy Division, The Fall…’
Ah, I see. Miserable indie guitar bands. Songs from the dark side? Eclectic. Yes. I get it. She smiles.
‘Well, other stuff tae, but ye put me on the spot, that’s aw.’ The VW almost takes off over another hump. ‘Jesus, could ye slow down a wee bit? Please?’
She takes her sun-shaded eyes away from the road to look at me and smirk. We continue at more than eighty in a sixty zone. She drives fast and recklessly, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the gear stick. We’re speeding over narrow country roads with hidden bends, flashing past a lumbering tractor like she’s immortal. She’s dressed in black, a short dress, tights and high-heeled shoes. Like a character from L.A. Law, and it’s no surprise when she tells me that’s her profession. It’s a look as identifiable in its own way as the swaggering Liam Gallagher clones of Manchester.
I’m clutching on to the side of my seat like a child on a roller-coaster that I’m too small for.
You okay there? she enquires. I suspect she’s enjoying my discomfort.
‘Aye. No worries.’ I’m beginning to feel glad I vomited earlier. ‘Anne, can ah ask ye a question?’
Is it the one about where babies come from?
‘Eh, naw.’ I snigger nervously. Her polished assuredness unnerves me. I’ve had too little experience of it, particularly with women of my own age. ‘Ye seem a bit too … professional tae be workin’ for a wee carpet company.’ She smiles. ‘Dae ye know what ah mean?’
I suppose so. She finally turns the Ibiza soundtrack’s relentless volume down. I’m Billy Kidd’s stepdaughter.
While it explains a lot, it takes me by surprise.
My mum met Billy when I was off on a gap year, backpacking around Australia and Japan. I came home and they were married. Big surprise, she says. I graduated from Strathclyde six years ago. Worked around the city, did some modelling … agency work, and then I came back to join the company as a director two years ago.
‘Dae ye like him’, I ask.
Yes. I do. Maybe not so much at first, but he’s a kind man. A rough diamond.
‘He never mentioned ye,’ I say.
Why would he? I wasn’t interviewing you. I’m not involved in the football side. I don’t even like football. I prefer rugby.
‘But ye were there that first night, an’ he never even introduced ye.’
The football’s his thing … him and his pals at the club. It’s his escape. I don’t interfere. I give him advice, but he doesn’t like it to be known that we’re related. He thinks people will treat me differently if there’s any suggestion of nepotism on his part.
‘What’s your thing?’ I ask.
Holidays, work, food … friends, clubbing, she responds without thinking. ‘And you?’
‘Em, fitba an’ music. That’s about it, really.’
Ah … Loaded Man, she says, sarcastically. ‘Fitball’s great … an’ Britpop’s great … an’ big tits are great … an’ beer’s great!’ A deep voice and a put-on accent, and she’s taking the piss. She must have me mixed up with someone else.
‘Ah don’t drink,’ I reply. ‘An’ ah don’t buy magazines either. So, what’s yer point, caller?’
She smiles ruefully at this. Okay, then, are you Team Liam or Team Damon?
‘Em … ah like both ae them. Does it have tae be a choice … one or the other?’
She shakes her head.
She takes a corner at a speed that throws me sideways. The taut seat belt, the only thing preventing me from hitting the door. For fuck’s sake! My shoulder almost pops out of its socket.
Ten minutes of mind-numbing music fills the gap where conversation was.
‘So, are you fae Ayrshire too then?’
She adjusts the dial to allow me to hear her answer. Originally, but we moved away when I was little. Up north. Ullapool, she says, opening up more now, but still driving at a ridiculous speed. I was adopted when I was six.
This also takes me by surprise. There’s no reason at all why it should. I just assumed her background would have been more stable, and unremarkable. I don’t delve further though, for fear that the reasons for her adoption at that age are mired in some form of trauma or tragedy. I’m not sure I could cope with any more of either.
I have no idea where Ullapool is. ‘They were a team on It’s a Knockout once,’ I say. She offers no acknowledgement. ‘Dae ye like it … workin’ for yer da, ah mean?’
I don’t work for him. I work with him, she says, forcefully. The volume increases. That’s my punishment.
We pull up sharply at temporary traffic controls. A triangular sign warned of their location just over the brow of a hill, but Anne didn’t slow the car. And she didn’t flinch when she had to jam on the brakes either. The operator glares at me through the car’s wind screen. With the music on and the windows up, we don’t hear him shouting, ‘Ya stupid cunt’ at me, but it’s an easy phrase to lip-read. He doesn’t even look at Anne, yet she stares calmly ahead, even though he’s almost on the car’s bonnet, such is his rage. He brandishes the Stop face of his oversized lollipop at me until a car horn in the queue behind indicates its driver’s frustration.
I look at Anne. She is totally unruffled. She revs the car. The operator turns the sign slowly. Before Go has fully appeared, we’re off; redlining the dashboard counter. In the rear-view mirror, I watch the road worker kick out at something.
Anne smiles. Live fast, die young, she says, the smile bursting into a giggle.
‘An’ leave a good-lookin’ corpse?’ I ask, although slamming into anything at the speed she drives would put that part of the aspiration in jeopardy.
I’m constructing this life of achievement. Drawing it out of her. Piecing it together. Intimidated by her confidence. Digging for her happiness. She works hard, and parties hard. Enjoys her friends and their nights out, the food, their love of the Glasgow clubs: the Sub and the Buff, not the Old Firm, naturally. We’re the same age, but opposites of each other.
‘Dae ye have a boyfriend?’ I ask her, during a mellower track. Her face is a mix of puzzlement at the questioning, and devilment at the boldness of it.
Why? Are you thinking of applying? She laughs when she notices me blushing.
‘Thought this trip was for you tae get tae know me better?’
You’ve already told me everything I need to know, Danny.
We lose the first league game after the cup tie. It’s a dreadful match, on Minishant’s rutted piggery of a pitch, enlivened only by a muscular Doberman running onto the park. A full-sized shovel is needed to remove the enormous shites it leaves in three different locations. All attempts to entice it off the field fail. After a break in play of nearly fifteen minutes it drifts over to the touchline, snarling at a linesman and chewing at the flag he drops in panic. Despite its size and the loudness of its bark, a brave Minishant centre half gets close enough to boot it right over a railing, where it subsequently attacks a supporter.
Minishant AFC 2-0 Barshaw Bridge.
Billy Gilmour asks me for an urgent post-match meeting. I panic, thinking he wants to pack it in. But instead, he pleads with me to speak to Damo’s mum; to ask if the boy is allowed to come to all of our games, not just the home ones. Young Billy is convinced Damo is a lucky mascot. It’s almost as if he can read my mind.
I’m at the library in Cumnock. Organising a timeline. Writing it all down. Connecting the fragments of Jock Reid’s life like I was his biographer on a tight pre-Christmas publication deadline. It’s a task I’ve thrown myself into. Since I found out about our shared past – that we both played for the Bridge; not the less gratifying parts – I feel like I owe him. There’s that word again. This weird obligation that so many in Barshaw feel towards others, because of the things they have done to them – whether willingly or unwillingly. Jock Reid’s resurrection might even be my salvation. If I can take some responsibility for the things that my brother did, then Nancy might see a better future with me than with Raymond. I’ve decided that Jock Reid will be the vehicle for my own renaissance.
Over the last month, my two principal sources have each painted part of the picture; his wife during tea breaks from my gardening stints, and Higgy, filling in the darker periods that framed the old man’s suffering. Both responding politely to my inquisitiveness.
‘Ah don’t really know where he learned tae play piano,’ Mrs Reid tells me. ‘He just always could, as far as ah can recall.’
‘He wis a journalist. A good yin, tae. No’ like these clowns nowadays,’ says Higgy. ‘Ah’ve mind he even covered the Peter Manual story. Won a few awards tae, if memory serves. Didnae help him much when the tabloids came crawlin’ all ower him though.’
‘He was a right home bird, ye know. He was born in this house. That’s why it’s always been so hard for me tae leave it, son.’ She tells me this as I flick through a box of old, torn sepia-tinted photographs that illustrate the moments of happiness and joy in their young lives.
‘He had this aul’ motor. A vintage Rolls-Royce like somethin’ ye’d imagine Al Capone drivin’. Big wheels an’ big sweepin’ fenders an’ enormous headlamps. It wis an auld rustin’ broken-down relic, though,’ says Higgy.
‘He loved that car,’ she says. ‘That was his retirement dream … tae restore it an’ go drivin’ round the Highlands.’ She laughs at the thought. There’s more chance ae yer local team winnin’ the Scottish Cup, she’d tell him.
‘The motor never moved. An’ he’d covered it in tarpaulin, tae. When the wee yin went missin’, the polis moved it an’ dug up the driveway an’ the garden. Nosey bastards round here assumed it wis because he’d done away wi’ her.’
‘We got rid of the car,’ she says. ‘After … well, y’know…’ I do, because she told me. ‘It was just too painful to look at.’
She must find it difficult, this revisiting of the past. Not, I think, because she can’t remember, but because she remembers only too clearly. But she trusts me now. I’m a good listener. A confidant. I sense that she likes talking about her husband and their life together. Even the painful bits.
‘We went fae sympathy tae suspicion tae accusation in less than a fortnight. It wis absolutely horrible. Beth was our only child. She wis Jock’s pride an’ joy. She wis a difficult birth. The cord got tied around her neck an’ her face wis blue when she came out of me,’ she says. ‘Jock wis always ower-protective, right through her school days.’ She glances up at me and an unusual look comes across her face. Like she’s lost herself in the telling and only just realised that she should stop. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. She looks away from me.
‘Don’t be,’ I say. I’d make a good therapist. ‘He’s clearly a wonderful man,’ I add, and she smiles, responding positively to me using the present tense. As if he’s outside, pottering around in a greenhouse tending to his tomatoes.
Her head lifts again and she continues. ‘Beth couldn’t cope in the beginnin’, after the wee yin disappeared. She wis a danger tae herself, an’ Jock went tae pieces. The police were outside there for two months.’ She has a photograph of little Louise-Anne with a small dog and it makes me shudder. She was in my primary-school class. She sat in the desk in front of me. I pulled her curly hair a few times. The names. Our names. That daily teacher song: Abbott, Ainsley, Baird, Bruce, Davidson, Demarco, Forrest, Garvey … Macdonald. Macdonald. It makes me shudder. Melville, Ross, Sinclair, Walkinshaw. Our little band of thirteen. No-one sat in her seat ever again. Our teacher left it for her; waiting for her to come back. And there was always a pause in the song from the time when we returned to the class. A gap. A void. A silence. Missing.
She keeps speaking. It’s like I’ve just surfaced from the depths of a deep pool and I can see her lips moving and I know she’s talking to me but I can’t hear properly, and it takes minutes for my muffled ears to clear to hear her say:
‘He just lost his mind,’ she says. ‘He’d forget things, an’ then he’d be wanderin’ about the village at aw hours. Sometimes he’d get a bit … aggressive, but it was just the frustration. The not knowin’.’
I don’t remember leaving Mrs Reid’s house. Don’t recall how her painful monologue ended. Can’t recollect if she asked me to leave or wanted me to stay. But I’m sitting at Higgy’s table and he’s filling in blanks, and memories that hid in the shadows are rushing out from the recesses and screaming at me.
‘Ach, it was brutal … folk swarmin’ about. Fae the papers. The telly. Vans an’ dugs an’ polis in white suits, diggin’ up the Reids’ garden. A woman across the road had mind ae seein’ the wee yin gettin’ skelped fae her granda that mornin’. She eventually telt the CID. Everybody fae the village had gie’d up searchin’ an’ the rumours started that she wis buried under that aul’ bloody motor.’ He pours himself a whisky and sits at my side. ‘Ashamed tae say me an’ Deek were up at the top ae the road, stood behind the tape. Watchin’. Waitin’ for them tae bring her out.’ He shakes his head. He picks up a photo from my file. The one showing Jock Reid in the Barshaw Bridge strip. ‘Great player, by aw accounts.’ He shakes his head. ‘Poor aul’ bastard.’
I swallow. It feels like I’m choking.
‘Are ye aw’right, son?’
‘What? Em … aye,’ I reply.
‘They never found her, wee Louise-Anne,’ says Higgy.
I know this already, but he seems to think I don’t. Either that or he’s constructing an alternative version in which he omits that he and Deek Henderson were amongst Jock Reid’s accusers. The voices in my head every night when I was trying to comprehend what had happened to my classmate belonged to them. They gave me someone to blame.
‘An’ then a year later … tae the day she went missin’, Jock Reid’s daughter gets found in the woods, hanging fae a low branch. Ah mean, how much bloody heartache can one man take, eh?’
Louise-Anne. Louise-Anne Macdonald. A shoeless child on a swing. Missing. Never found. I used to talk to her. While I hid under the Barshaw Bridge, waiting for them to find me. I spoke to her. She told me to go home.
‘When aul’ Jock hit ye wi’ his cane, yon time, ah had to remind yer ma an’ Raymond what he must’ve went through aw they years. The thought that she’d ran away because he’d leathered her for somethin’ daft. An’ that wis the last time he’d seen her. Ye ken whit weans can be like, Jesus. Drive ye tae distraction, so they can.’
I’m unable to speak. He’s dredging up images that have lain submerged for years. I’m struggling to absorb the depths of this tragedy. Weighing up how I contributed to it years later.
‘Raymond was for suin’,’ Higgy continues, referring to the aftermath of my beating with the cane. ‘Even though it’d nothin’ tae dae wi’ him. Sometimes, ye’ve just got tae have a wee bit ae sympathy an’ understandin’, y’know?’ He looks at me. Straight at me. It’s a concerned look. His head tilted slightly, like a dog trying to work out the meaning of a command.
‘Danny, son, ye maybe shouldnae delve too deep intae this again.’ The again is confusing me.
And this may seem hard to believe. Unprompted, both Higgy and old Mrs Reid have spoken about the difference between loneliness and being alone. Higgy has spent much of his life alone. His choice, in the main. Mrs Reid – for other reasons – has been alone for decades, even when her husband was with her. Jock Reid, both maintain, had aloneness forced on him. Latterly, he seemed to find a certain insulated respite in that, according to his wife. Just before he died, the old man had found a way of coping, she told me. It couldn’t be described as contentment, but it was a more meaningful existence. Unlike the days when we tormented him; when he wandered in a fog of pain and confusion, he went out walking early every morning. To be alone.
None of them were necessarily lonely though. Not in the sense that I have been since I left the village to go to the north-east. Or even before that, when my fragmented, complicated relationships in Barshaw left me isolated. Football has always been the only thing that’s given me a sense of purpose. That’s offered some degree of safety or security. On the pitch, as part of a collective. On the side-lines, as the orchestrator of that collective. But when the final whistle blew, there has only ever been me. Danny Garvey. There’s only one Danny fucking Garvey. Belonging to no-one. Alone. And that’s always been the root of the problem.
