“A prime site,” says the barmaid, turning a page.
“Yes, a prime site. He has stuffed every room from floor to ceiling with old earthenware sinks, cisterns and lavatory pans.”
“I’ve seen them through the oriel windows.”
“You’ll never see them again. Yesterday he had the windows white-washed on the inside to deter burglars. Modern bathroom fixtures are mostly plastic. My brother thinks rich folk (not billionaires with gold-plated bathrooms but slightly poorer rich people) will soon want antique earthenware plumbing. When that kind of retro design hits the colour supplements he will unload his Irvine Smith treasury and make a killing, as we say in the Stock Exchange.”
“Good.”
“Do you know what, in my opinion, is life’s best thing?”
She does not answer because an old man wearing a long coat and flat cap has entered and stands gazing round in dazed way. The barmaid asks if he is looking for someone. He says, “Whaur are the muriels?”
She tells him she knows nobody called Muriel.
“Ye’ve goat me wrang, misses,” he says. “Am talkin aboot big wa’ pentins, same as Michelangelo pentit a’ owr the Pope’s private chapel.”
“This is a respectable pub in a respectable neighbourhood,” says the other customer sternly. “Don’t drag religion into it.”
“What would you like to drink sir?” asks the barmaid kindly.
“A wee goldie, please miss. But whaur did the muriels go? Did Kelvingrove Art Gallery grab them?”
“When did you ever see a mural painting in this place?” asks the regular customer with contempt.
“At the time of the Upper Clyde work-in. A wiz a fitter in the yards and a shop steward. Jimmy Reid led us up this wie tae a protest meetin ootside the B.B.C.”
“The B.B.C. building is south of the river,” says the barmaid placing a small whisky on the bar. “Twenty pounds please.”
“Twenty pounds for a wee goldie!” cries the old man, dismayed. He sadly lays down two ten-pound nickel coins, then sips his drink murmuring, “A great man, Jimmy Reid. Him and me wiz oot thegether in the 1950s apprentice strike. A great man for the Working Class and for Culture. That is why he broat me in here. ‘This pub is whit every Scots pub should be,’ says Jimmy, ‘a livin centre of local community culture. Here the Scottish intelligentsia mingle with ane anither and with the common workin man. Hugh MacDiarmid! Jack House! The Wee MacGreegor! Wullie Joss of the MacFlannels! Duncan Macrae who appeared in Our Man In Havana alang wi’ Alec Guinness and Noel Coward! And James Bridie, the Scottish George Bernard Shaw — Bridie who wrote that great London West End success, Bunty Pulls the Strings! And if they’re no actually here today when we drap in, ye can still see them pentit on the wa’s as large as life’ and so they were. Aye, so they were. Mhm, so they were.”
“Do you know how absurd you are being?” demands the regular customer.
The old man stares at him,
“Absurd and also obnoxious!” says his critic. “It is offensive to have a list of forgotten has-beens recited over us. Since the Upper Clyde work-in fiasco this pub has been completely renovated umpteen times by more managements than you’ve had decent breakfasts. You can bet your bottom dollar that soon after you saw them those old mural panels were chucked into a skip and taken straight to Dawsholm incinerator.”
“Even the muriel of the novelists? Barke, Blake, Gaitens and Guy McCrone who wrote No Mean City?”
With sadistic relish his tormenter says, “They were the first to go.”
The old man, stupefied, puts his empty glass on the counter and wanders out.
His departure seems to free the regular customer of a burden.
“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted,” he tells the barmaid briskly, “do you know what the best thing in life is?”
“No.”
“The kind of frank and friendly talk I am having with you.”
“Thanks.”
“Outside this pub I find it almost impossible to have a civilized conversation. Last night I was served in the Grosvenor Hotel lounge by a young chap, a very tight-lipped, taciturn, depressed chap. To cheer him up I told him about the wife leaving me, about the bills I had to pay and goldfish I had to feed. Do you know what he turned round and said to me?”
“What?”
“He said, My friend, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal saviour?”
“And had you?” said the barmaid, studying the astrology page.
“Had I what?”
“Accepted Christ as your personal saviour.”
“For God’s sake!” he cries. “Is every pub in this city staffed by religious fanatics? I refuse to tolerate fanaticism, fundamentalism or any form of bigotry. Every Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu or Quaker bigot should be hung, drawn, quartered, cut down while still living, buried up to the neck in the ground and stoned to death regardless of race, religion, nationality, political creed or — ”
Someone breenges in saying “Amen! Hear hear! Good thinking! I’m with you all the way on that!”
The stranger looks like a younger, happier version of the man he interrupts. He lays a wad of notes on the bar crying, “Drinks all round! For me, a large malt of the month. For you miss, whatever you like. For my pal here, whatever he likes.”
“I don’t drink at work,” says the barmaid, pouring the malt for him.
“No more for me thanks,” says the regular customer, quickly taking a newspaper from his pocket, holding it up and appearing to read closely. In one swig the stranger empties his glass, slams it back on the counter and tells the barmaid, “Another. And keep them coming until that’s used up.”
He points to his money on the bar then asks the regular customer what he thinks of the weather.
“I don’t discuss politics,” is the short reply from behind the newspaper.
“O come come come!” says the stranger cheerily. “You used to be mad about climate change. You were a pal of Harvey Drambogie.”
“I have never in my life known a man called Harvey Drambogie.”
“But you shared a flat with him when you were students together. That flat was a hotbed of Greenpeace and climate control freaks.”
From behind the newsprint barrier a voice says distinctly, “As a student I once shared a flat with a lot of folk whose faces and names I cannot now remember and do not want to remember. Someone called Harvey was maybe one of them, maybe not. Even then I was staunchly unpolitical and am even more so now — a Tory, in other words.”
“You can’t possibly have always been so antisocial!” says the stranger, chuckling. “And Utopian politics were an innocent hobby in those days. There was no harm in you and Drambogie making pirate radio broadcasts, telling us the government should be throwing up dykes.” “You are mixing me up with someone else.”
There is a long silence in which the stranger quickly drinks several large whiskies before saying coldly, “It is clearly time to remove my velvet glove and give you a touch of the iron hand. Look at this. Know what it means?”
He holds out a card in a transparent plastic envelope. The regular customer glances at it, sighs, says, “Yes,” and gloomily lays down the newspaper.
“Let me spell it out in detail. This card gives me power to arrest whoever gets on my tits and hold them indefinitely for questioning, without their family and friends being informed, and without access to legal advice.”