I sat down again, feeling suddenly deflated.
There were a couple of old guys over in one corner of the lounge, quietly playing dominoes, nursing their hauf an haufs. Old, grey, hunched, small, I don't think I'd even noticed them when Jean and I had first entered the bar. I shrugged to myself and went back to my drink.
It was only about ten minutes later, finishing my pint, that I realised I'd forgotten to ask Jean how well her arm and collar bone had healed.
FIVE
I woke up in a panic. I didn't even know what was causing it at first, but there was an alarming, erratic whirling and chopping noise filling my bedroom in the folly's tower. I got my eyes open at last and sat up — head pounding after an afternoon, evening and night drinking with McCann — to discover a pigeon fluttering madly about the room. It careened from wall to wall like a fly in a jam jar, scattering feathers behind it and making bewildered, terrified cooing noises. It headed towards the window and thumped against the glass, losing more feathers and leaving a long stream of shit sliding down the glass. It bounced back through the air, circled briefly and then had another go, cracking its head against the glass.
The pigeon repeated this manoeuvre three times while I was still trying to focus properly and untangle myself from the bedclothes. Each time it missed the opened top section of window — which it must have flown in through — by a few centimetres. I fell out of bed and knocked over the loudspeaker that serves as a bedside table, spilling a glass of water and a silvery container full of some sluggish brown mess allover the sheepskin rug. I lay staring at the debris for a moment or two, wondering what it was, then saw the chunks of meat and the plastic fork sticking out of the glutinously spreading pile of food; I could smell it, too; curry. Must have gone for a take-away last night.
The pigeon slammed against the glass again. 'Cretin!' I shouted, and heaved a pillow at it. The pillow hit the opened top window and wedged in the gap. The bird increased its frantic efforts to smash the glass. I struggled off the floor, dragging most of the bedclothes after me, hauled the pillow out of the top window and started waving my hands about to try and guide the bird through the gap. The main part of the window wasn't designed to open, so there wasn't much else I could do.
It was like trying to catch a small feathered explosion. The bird twittered, crapped on my bed, thumped into a wall and started circling round the light fixture in the centre of the ceiling. It swooped towards me, veered away again, then made for the window once more. I looked at the mess it had left on my bed, and the mess I'd left on the rug. I thought about heaving the loudspeaker through the window so the animal could escape that way, but the window looked onto St Vincent Street and I didn't want to brain a pedestrian. I decided to leave the stupid beast to it. With any luck it would get out on its own, or break its neck. My hangover required attention.
The bird shot over my head and down the tower's spiral staircase the instant I opened the door. I stood breathing heavily, then followed it downstairs.
It was nearly one by the time I felt sufficiently rehydrated to face the outside world. The Griffin was the place to go; if McCann was there he might be able to tell me what I'd done the previous day. My memory entered a sort of grey area sometime round about the middle of the evening, after we left the Griff. We'd gone for a meal then, hadn't we? ... in fact I thought we'd gone to the Ashoka for a curry, and not a take-away either. I also had a vague recollection of stumbling about in the darkness on a curiously deserted piece of roadway, but that was about all that came back to me. The question was, where had my body picked up all these aches and pains?
I had a shower and inspected myself for signs of damage. I already knew about my grazed hands and barked knuckles, but my knees were bruised and cut too, and there was a big bruise forming on my left hip. My face showed no signs of damage beyond that inflicted by my genes. Looked like I hadn't been in a fight (not that I normally get into fights, but barked knuckles always make you wonder).
My coat was hanging over the large samovar in the choir. The rest of my clothes were missing. A cooing noise came from somewhere overhead, but the pigeon wasn't visible anywhere amongst the plaster scrollwork and dark wood beams of the roof, sixty feet overhead.
The place was cold. I have an industrial space heater which looks like a small jet engine on a large wheelbarrow and runs on paraffin; I lit it and stood twenty feet downwind, keeping warm and drying my hair at the same time, while I dug some new clothes out of an old trunk. I chose a pair of trainers that matched, just for a change.
I felt okay. Coffee, orange juice and most of a bottle of Irn Bru (not the diet version), seemed to have restored my body's fluid level. A handful of paracetamol had blasted the headache, and a couple of seasickness tablets dealt with my queasy stomach. And, no, I was not set for another day's hard drinking; I'm not that stupid, not these days.
McCann wasn't there but Wee Tommy was. Tommy is seventeen or eighteen, tall and thin, and sports a shaved blond head. He is always dressed completely in black. Style; New Austerity. My other occasional accomplice.
Just as McCann is too old to have heard of me in my Weird incarnation, so Tommy is too young. Too young to care if not to know about; to him even Punk is something from the bright and distant past, and anything before that is from some almost mythical age. He regards bands like Frozen Gold as the musical equivalents of multinational corporations; big, efficient, heartless, impersonal, profitable, and with interests and values either irrelevant to his, or opposed. Don't entirely disagree myself. Anyway, he too thinks I'm just the folly's minder, not its owner. He's shown even less interest in Weird than McCann, he just thinks St Jute's is a cool place to hang out, man. (That's almost a direct quote by the way. Don't ask me what's going on; fashions in language have always confused me, too.)
'Drink?'
'Aw, it's yerself Jim ... Aye, I'll take a wee voddy.'
I got Tommy a large vodka. I was on English shandies; half and half beer and lemonade. 'Aw, Jim,' Tommy said, 'could I have a half a heavy for TB?'
'Aye,' I said, looking round. I'd thought Tommy was alone. 'Who?'
'The dug.' Tommy pointed to his feet. Under the table there was a large black dog lying with its massive head resting on its sphinxed legs; looked like a cross between an alsatian and a wolfuound ... or maybe just a wolf. It lifted its head and growled at me; I growled back and it snorted, lowered its head onto its arm-thick forelegs, probably going back to the contemplation of which of the regulars to gnaw on first.
'In an ashtray, that all right, Jim?'
'What?'
'The heavy; could ye get Bella to put it in an ashtray?'
'Dyae waant a straight ashtray, aye?' The wee wifey behind the bar said as soon as I turned back to order the hound's bevvy.
I admired Bella's toothless smile for a moment and couldn't think of a smart reply. ' Just as it comes, Bella,' I told her.
'That thing yours?' I sat down with Tommy between me and the beast's teeth and watched it lap enthusiastically at the beerfilled ashtray. Damn hound spilled less than I normally do.
'Naw, it's ma uncle's. I'm lookin after it while he's in the hospital.'
'What bit of him did it eat?'
'Na; he's in tae get his piles done.' Tommy grinned. 'He'll only be a few days. You wouldnae bite anybody, would ye, TB?' He reached down and scratched the animal vigorously behind its neck. The dog didn't seem to notice. 'That you on the shandies, big yin?' Tommy looked at my glass.
'Aye. I'm looking for McCann to tell me what we did last night.'
'You up to no good, aye?'